Even though i am not into sports big time, i used to watch matches where my country plays, whether this is football, Basketball, Volleyball etc etc. Regarding Basket, these past few years i would say that we are lucky to have Giannis Antetokounmpo a phenomenal player who plays in NBA. I know Giannis backstory, i live in area close to where he grew up, lived and played basketball in Greece and i admire his character and ethos.
I think most Greek people love him as well and that's why basketball these past few years have grown a lot in Greece, more people are watching and supporting the teams. To add to that, both Greece and some Greek teams as well are doing pretty good.
So on Friday we had the game with Turkey, where we lost the match big time. A crucial much as the winner would go to the finals and basically the winner would either get the first or second place. Currently the Greece plays with Finland for the 3rd place.
To be honest, a game between Greece and Turkey also plays a big role as there is a huge history between us and not in a good way. To understand the importance even the Turkish president called the coach Ataman to say congratulations.
My thoughts about the game were that the Turkish team played way better than us. They have great players, their coach was basically a coach to one of the top Greek teams so he basically knows all the ins and outs, some of the Greek players' weaknesses and strengths. Some of their players even play or have played in Greek teams, so they also know the ins and outs.
To add to that and this is my personal opinion, Giannis is on a whole other level. He basically carried us the whole time. In some games, he scored half of the points alone. Therefore, coach Ataman decided to add extreme pressure to Giannis, making him unable to do much. That also had an effect on our team and we made a whole lot of mistakes which led to our demise.
So we lost fair and square. What i didn't like, though, was the attitude after the Turkish team won. Even though Ataman had a more balanced attitude, some of the players were extremely hateful, to say the least. Even their official organization posted something hateful towards Greece and after official complaints, they decided to delete it. Then they blamed a random employee, that this was his doing alone, on their official accounts i repeat.
In my opinion, sports should unite us and not have that kind of politics involved. There is no point in that. Literally, we had Turkish players and a coach who were employed and getting paid by Greeks, so why the politics? In sports, some days you lose some day you win, all that matters is to win and play fair and square.