The head coach of Khimki, Giorgos Bartzokas, spoke with the team’s official website and referred to the FIBA windows and the negative effect they have on the teams.
Here is what the Greek coach said:
On the FIBA WC Qualifiers: “All the teams are having the same problems in the preseason with these windows of FIBA. Honestly, this situation creates a lot of problems for us. First, is that we still don’t have Shved. Russian national team had three weeks for preparations.
No other national team had a long period for working. So, we lost our national team players. Then, we lost Gubanov from national team games. Also, now Shved had to go to Barcelona due to EuroLeague obligations. For us, it’s a problem.”
On his squad’s pre-season preparation so far: “Prather is injured and is still out; Bost was out with Bulgarian national team; Markovic is still not ready. It’s not easy to make conclusions from [Cyprus Tournament] games, but so far day by day the team is getting better, players learning each other and our philosophy. It’s always the same process.
This period you try to learn how your players act, how they think, how they play. Honestly, I think that bearing in mind that we didn’t have three point guards in the [Cyprus] tournament, we were competitive, that’s more important.”
