A victory against Panionios
The “red-whites” did not play well against Panionios in Nea Smirni, but they did what they had to at the end to reach a 3-0 record in the Greek League.
With Spanoulis and Gordon leading and good defense as the main weapon after the first fifteen minutes, Olympiacos came back from trailing 12 (31-19 at the beginning of the second quarter) and in the last quarter, they “unlocked” Panionios defense and thus reached victory.
The quarters: 22-17, 38-35, 51-55, 70-77.
Panionios (G. Bartzokas): Athanassoulas 6 (2), Vujanic 14 (2), Giannopoulos 5 (1), Τsiaras 3 (1), Athineou, Mpatis 10 (1), Jankovic 5 (1), Ioannou 3, Sarikopoulos, Elonu 8, Paragios 5, Barlos 11 (1).
Οlympiacos (D. Ivkovic): Papaloukas 10, Νesterovic 12 (6reb), Gordon 2 (8reb, 4st), Spanoulis 24 (5/7 2p, 3/6 1p, 3/6 3p, 4 αss), Bourousis 10, Keselj 1, Pelekanos 1, Νielsen 12, Papanikolaou, Τeodosic 5 (5ass, 3st, 4t, 1/6 3p).
DUSAN IVKOVIC: I believe we won fairly, but we did not show a good face and we did not play good basketball. Panionios has been going on with a very rich tradition, they play with young players, they didn’t have any pressure, they played hard and simple and we were losing to a team with a 64% shooting percentage in the first half. This means we had been very bad in defense, mainly at one on one.
On Jamon Gordon: Gordon helped us stay in the game with his defense; we have had worse percentages in both 2-pointers and 3-pointers. We had been better only at steals and offensive rebounding and Gordon helped there as well. He’s a good example for the whole team. What worries us is that we played almost the same ten days ago in Germany, without energy, so we have a lot of work ahead of us.
On the very few assists away from the Peace and Friendship Stadium: It’s a matter of defense. We didn’t play defense. You cannot run and create, if you walk at defense. This percentage of assists and turnovers is very different in our home court that when we play away and we have to fix this.
On the absence of Mavrokefalides: He’s an important player at least for us. He got injured before the game in Bamberg. We missed him there as well, although we don’t care about psychology. It may have been a mistake to rush him to play against Unicaja, he could have played tonight, but I didn’t want to push him. With all these changes, Bourousis has not been good playing the “4” and he didn’t help us. It was obvious that we were missing Mavrokefalides, but basketball is a team sport and there shouldn’t be any problem.
JAMON GORDON: It was a tough game, they played terrific and did not quit, we made many mistakes and hadn’t been mentally ready for such a tough away encounter. We should be much more focused; fortunately we won at the end.
I had the chance to show all of my game last year. Now the situation is different. I respect every player on the team, I respect all our coach has been telling us, and I have a different role. What I have been trying is to show how well I can play defense and do whatever I can to help my team win.