Basket rumors

Turkey’s NT head coach Ergin Ataman spoke with media the day after the loss to Georgia about the fight in the tunnel and the 22 seconds less played in the game.

Per Basketnews, “The biggest organization in European basketball, EuroBasket… what happened on the court and in the locker room is a scandal. After Furkan Korkmaz was disqualified, he went to the locker room with one of our staff members, but three Georgian players… What I’m told is that it was [Tornike] Shengelia, [Goga] Bitadze, and the ejected player (Duda Sanadze), who directly attacked Korkmaz in the locker room.

And our staff member also got hit. He went down. When the game finished, I went to my locker room, and I saw that Furkan Korkmaz was in the coach’s locker room. They protected him in the locker room and put him there. This is a scandal. Everything is a scandal here, starting from our arrival in Georgia. Every day, especially on the first and second days, we came there with 40-45 minutes of traffic in the practice or on the game day.

At the hotel, there is no special food for the athletes. Okay, that’s fine, but FIBA must protect the players in the game. What happened yesterday is a scandal. At the end of the game, when my players were going to the locker room, local police attacked my players. They tried to push us into the locker room, and they attacked our [federation’s] vice-president. Everything is incredible.

That’s one part. The other part, during the game, we played 22 seconds less. It’s a basketball game. If the game is in overtime and we have the last ball, we had the ball for only two seconds.

We tried to complain to the referees during the game, and they said, ‘No problem.’ Then, immediately after the game, we make our official protest because 22 seconds is a long period of time in a basketball game. Now we are waiting for FIBA to put a strategy to cancel the game or to let the game play for 4.5 minutes.

If not, it’s something really ridiculous. About my ejection from the game, the referees gave an unsportsmanlike foul to Cedi Osman for a small tactical foul, and it’s also ridiculous. I deserved to get disqualified because I made a long protest for this call that you call in the second overtime, in this kind of game.

It’s a ridiculous unsportsmanlike foul. I complained about the call, this is what happened here. This is big damage to world basketball because these players came here to play basketball.

Furkan Korkmaz said that after the game he was involved in a street fight with some players of Georgia’s NT while he was going to the locker room after being ejected for a discussion with Sanadze.

Per Basketnews, “You saw a little part of what happened on the court,” Korkmaz began his statement. “We got into each other face to face, and he started talking shit to me. I’m not gonna let anyone talk shit to my face.”

“In the game, yeah. It’s part of the game. You talk something and say something back, but the thing he said wasn’t something I’ll let slide. I reacted as a human being, as a player, and as a man,” Korkmaz added.

After being asked about the incident in the tunnel, the Philadelphia 76ers forward confirmed that there was a physical interaction between him and other Georgia team members.

“When I was talking to the tunnel, our conditioning guy was with me. As soon as we walked out of the tunnel and were trying to reach the locker room, I saw three Georgian players alongside two security guys running at us. We started throwing punches at each other. That’s basically what happened,” Korkmaz said.

“It was like a street fight. There was no talk or conversation. People just came at us and were trying to attack us. Of course, we reacted and tried to defend ourselves – exactly what we are going to do as men. I also think it’s a security problem. But I don’t know if it’s a security problem or if they just showed tolerance to their players.

We understand that they’re at home, but this is unacceptable. What happens on the court is fine, but we should talk more about what happens off the court,” Korkmaz continued.