{"id":398988,"date":"2026-01-08T04:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T04:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/398988\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T04:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T04:33:08","slug":"ergin-ataman-if-we-dont-win-the-euroleague-or-the-championship-im-leaving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/398988\/","title":{"rendered":"Ergin Ataman: “If we don’t win the Euroleague or the championship, I’m leaving”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michalis Gioulenoglou \/ info@eurohoops.net<\/a><\/p>\n

Panathinaikos<\/a> coach Ergin Ataman dropped a bombshell at the media day of the match against Virtus Bologna, one day after the home defeat to Armani Milano<\/a>, which also caused boos from the stands.<\/p>\n

After expressing his confidence in his players, he emphasized that if Panathinaikos<\/a> does not win the Greek championship or the Euroleague this year, he will leave the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have great confidence in my players. I want to give them another big challenge. As you know, I have another year of a guaranteed contract. But if at the end of the season we have not won the Euroleague or the Greek championship, then I will leave Athens,\u201d the Turkish coach said characteristically.<\/p>\n

Ergin Ataman also mentioned Mathias Lesort, giving a small update on his return, with an asterisk.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope our most important signing will be Mathias Lesort, if he can come back in 3-4 weeks, which I hope,\u201d Ataman commented when asked about a possible addition and the name of former EuroLeague MVP Nigel Hayes-Davies, who was rumored to be a team target, despite his contract with the Phoenix Suns<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis team, with this roster, is a candidate for the title, like many other teams. As you can see in the last 2-3 weeks, many teams that are candidates and are in a good position, like Olympiacos<\/a>, Fenerbahce<\/a>, and Efes<\/a>, have made transfers. Transfers are something that in big teams can be discussed, and our team is thinking about some players. I don\u2019t know if it will be these players, none, or some others. One of the best teams at the moment, Fenerbahce<\/a>, signed De Colo and Silva. Olympiacos<\/a> signed Jones; it\u2019s normal,\u201d he added without giving any more details on the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Michalis Gioulenoglou \/ info@eurohoops.net Panathinaikos coach Ergin Ataman dropped a bombshell at the media day of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-398988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}