{"id":490606,"date":"2026-03-30T21:23:02","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T19:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=490606"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:23:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T19:23:02","slug":"ataman-slams-referees-after-panathinaikos-loss-to-olympiacos-this-was-theater-not-a-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/ataman-slams-referees-after-panathinaikos-loss-to-olympiacos-this-was-theater-not-a-basketball\/","title":{"rendered":"Ataman slams referees after Panathinaikos loss to Olympiacos: &#8220;This was theater, not a basketball&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-start=\"113\" data-end=\"347\"><span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Ergin Ataman<\/span><\/span> didn\u2019t hold back in criticizing the refereeing and some Greek league rules following <span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Panathinaikos<\/span><\/span>\u2019s loss to <span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Olympiacos<\/span><\/span>. Here are his statements:<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"349\" data-end=\"865\"><strong data-start=\"349\" data-end=\"371\">Ataman\u2019s comments:<\/strong><br data-start=\"371\" data-end=\"374\" \/>\u201cThis was theater, not a basketball game. Today we cannot talk about basketball. I would like to ask you if Dorsey and Walkup can play together on the national team at the same time: can they? No. Because they are two naturalized players. But here in the league they play like that. I don\u2019t think this happens in other countries. Vezenkov is a Bulgarian national team player. We are talking about three players, plus six foreigners, plus three referees. For us, it is very difficult to win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"867\" data-end=\"1218\"><strong data-start=\"867\" data-end=\"902\">On the exchange with a referee:<\/strong><br data-start=\"902\" data-end=\"905\" \/>\u201cIt was also a funny moment, because in the first half I asked one of the referees: \u2018Why didn\u2019t you call this obvious foul, while the other one did?\u2019 and he replied: \u2018Coach, it\u2019s my first Greek derby.\u2019 And I told him: \u2018You started very well, so you will be a protagonist in all the next Greek derbies like this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1220\" data-end=\"1567\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"><strong data-start=\"1220\" data-end=\"1251\">On the game and the future:<\/strong><br data-start=\"1251\" data-end=\"1254\" \/>\u201cI am proud of the players because they fought in the second half\u2026 The game does not change our life or our situation in the league; we tried, but they didn\u2019t allow us to. I told my players in the locker room: I don\u2019t care. For me, the most important thing is the next three away games we have in the EuroLeague.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coach Ergin Ataman slams referees after Panathinaikos loss to Olympiacos: &#8220;This was theater, not a basketball&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":486922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[249],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-490606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-greece"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2026\/03\/Ataman2-1200x800-1.webp","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490606"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=490606"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=490606"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=490606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}