Željko Obradović spoke to journalists after the victory in Madrid.
Partizan broke through, beat Real in Madrid and took the lead in the quarter-final series (89:87). The player of the decision was Kevin Panter, who hit a crucial three-pointer with 0.4 seconds left. He took responsibility, took the ball as captain and put an end to the match in the capital of Spain.
After the match, at the press conference, Željko Obradović also praised him. “He took the ball, he wanted him to decide the match. He could shoot for two, he wanted for three. It’s not the first time, I hope it won’t be the last time, that he solves. Because of such things, he is a fantastic player, he has the ability to decide the match with such moves,” laughed Obradović.
He also referred to the events on the floor. “This was a good game, both teams could have won the match, this is basketball, everything happened on the court in the last seconds. Panther was calm after the point by Deka. I am happy with the way the team fought against a team like Real. We will analyze the match immediately. In the first half, Real was good in the offensive jump, in the second we improved. We are leading 1:0 and that is nice, of course, but we need to win three games to pass. It is positive that we will have two safe matches in Belgrade.”
The second match will be played on Thursday in Spain, after which everything will be decided in the Serbian capital. If Real wins, it will be 1:1 and two matches will be played in Belgrade, if Partizan wins, they will immediately have match ball in the “Arena”. “Basketball is a beautiful sport. I had a problem with fouls by Smailagić and Ledej, early on they each got four personal fouls and I tried to solve that. When you win, it seems that everything was good, which was not the case. We played against a great team that has many experienced players and we knew it would not be easy.”
Finally, a Spanish journalist asked him about the support of the audience that came to Madrid. “Thanks for that question, we have fans who believe in us, who believed even when we had a score of 4-9 in the Euroleague. We have unconditional support and are with us wherever we go. There were about 300 people in the stands and we are grateful for their support, we are fighting for them, they give us extra strength,” said Obradović, who spoke in Spanish throughout the conference, while in Serbian he revealed what he said to his team:
“The positive and most positive thing is that we won, the beauty of basketball adorned the game. Many things happened in the last seconds. Kevin decided the match on individual quality, but the team fought, we had a plan for the game, and the problem was that Smailagić got fouled very early. In the second half we found a way to create formations without him suffering that. But Real are a serious team. We had problems in the one-on-one game as well as their offensive rebounding. In the end we finished thanks to three-point shot”.
“In the second game we have to do better, and above all smarter, there are things that we have already seen and that we will analyze. The most positive thing is the victory, thank you to the people who came to fight us. The Spanish media also came to support us, and on In the end, the most positive thing of all is that we have two games in our Arena. The series is still open, we have no reason to think that we have done anything, because we are playing against a team that is one of the biggest favorites as always to win the Euroleague”!
“The biggest mistake we could make is to try to play casually. Leaving something for later is impossible, that’s the first thing I told the players in the dressing room“