By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Ergin Ataman is currently coaching the Turkish national team in the Eurobasket, starting the tournament with an impressive win over Latvia, however, just before the start of the tournament, in an interview published on Monday in the Australian outlet, “Basketball”, he spoke about the upcoming trip of Panathinaikos to Australia for the “Pavlos Giannakopoulos” tournament, repeating that the gab between the NBA and Europe is not big.
“I told people these things, if you took out one star player from these NBA teams, I believe that many EuroLeague teams can beat the NBA teams,” Ataman said, who is currently coaching Houston Rockets star Alperen Sengun in the Turkish national team.
As he explained: “Listen, I believe that two years or three years ago, in the pre-season, there were many games between the EuroLeague teams and NBA teams. If I’m not wrong, 70 or 80% of the games, the EuroLeague teams won. There is no big difference between the NBA teams and the EuroLeague teams. With all due respect to the NBA, they have many star players, they are really star players, like LeBron, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and if you took out one of them, a lot of EuroLeague teams would win.”
Ataman repeated that the NBA champions should not be called World Champions: “Sometimes, especially last year, I complained when the NBA teams declared themselves as the world champions. When the NBA teams won the NBA title, they declared immediately that they were the world champions. I complained about this because that season we were the EuroLeague champions, and I made the challenge against them. If you want to be a world champion, you must come to beat the EuroLeague champion. Maybe you must come to beat the Australian champion as well. So, for me, it’s a challenge every time, and I said again, with all the respect with the NBA teams, EuroLeague basketball is a very high-level competition, and to be a world champion, they must play against us. It will be a challenge, also maybe for the future, there will be at the end of the season or at the beginning of the season a competition with some EuroLeague teams, Australian teams, and NBA teams, to understand the quality and the level of basketball around the world. Maybe in the future, this game will also be in Australia, I don’t know. So, we are ready to come to play everywhere for this title.”
According to Ataman, the main difference now it’s the on-court mentality: “NBA basketball has now become more like a show, but EuroLeague is both. There is a show, but there is also big competition; every game is like a final. Right now, in all the world, also in the USA, I know that people are following the EuroLeague basketball.”
On a more practical note, the trip to Australia is not an easy one, and Ataman didn’t hesitate to name his team as the top-ranking contender for the EuroLeague title: “It will be a very serious game, and it will be our first full pre-season game. Because of Eurobasket, which will finish on the 14th of September, we have in the Eurobasket seven national team players, including me and one of our assistants. So, we will meet all together in Australia and we will play our first pre-season serious game in Australia. Actually, this season will be different for us because we will not have any pre-season preparation in Europe or any pre-season games in Europe. So, we will consider very seriously these games that we will play in Australia. Especially, Partizan is another big team in the EuroLeague, which is coached by one of the legendary coaches, Zeljko Obradovic, so that for sure will be a good game. For us will not be easy because half of the team will travel 18 hours to come to Australia after the Eurobasket. But, of course, we like to beat Partizan in the first pre-season game in Melbourne… Partizan also has many new players on the roster, and we have three to four new players. As you know, we are one of the best teams in the EuroLeague, and this season we are the number one ranked for the title”.
Speaking about the Eurobasket, Ataman added: “I believe that the EuroBasket is more intense and more competitive than the World Cup, because there is a minimum of seven to eight teams that are candidates for the gold medal. There are a lot of EuroLeague players, EuroLeague star players, and there are also a lot of NBA star players. It’s a mix. It’s the high level. It’s the intensity of the EuroLeague with the NBA stars in this EuroBasket.”