By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
With the score being 98-74, Fenerbahce fouled in order to get possession and the last shot on the way to a 100-74 win over Anadolu Efes.
Ataman, the coach of the losing side, explained his reaction after the game: “So far, I have won and lost against Zeljko many times. All the times I went to shake hands. Today I did not, and he knows why. Opponents and coaches must respect each other. Being up by 24 and taking a shot in the last six seconds is a huge disrespect in our line of work. Honestly, I felt sorry. However, he had a tough week as well. First the slap issue, and then the defeat by 25 points by Olympiacos. I want to state that I felt sorry”.
Speaking of the game, Ataman added: “We started the game pretty bad. As the EuroLeague’s reigning champs, they suffered from being crushed by Olympiacos by 25 points, and they started very tough and focused on. We couldn’t find that rhythm in the very beginning. Then we tried to catch but we couldn’t. And there was a huge margin. Some of our players did not contribute at all. We are going to take the necessary steps. We decided to play with this roster today. We had Douglas and Stimac on our roster, but it turned out that we were wrong to do so. This, maybe, affected us negatively.”
Coach Zeljko Obradovic was asked to comment what Ataman said, but said he didn’t want to speak about this matter.