After many years and hundreds of games in Greece and in Europe and because our silence has obviously been interpreted falsely as weakness, we are forced to issue the present statement out of respect to the effort that’s being made by PAOK, the team’s history and its fans.

The reason to do so is the unprecedented treatment of our team by the officiating crew of tonight’s game at the Alexandreio Melathro, that took Greek basketball many years backwards.

We don’t dwell either on the uneven distribution of fouls and free throws (34-13), nor on the frantic effort to discover an unsportsmanlike foul only 42 second before the end of the prorogation, in a classic and clearly visible case of a simple foul, but rather on the play that decided the winner of the game.  

Fans all over Greece became witnesses to a clear theft by people that did not respect either the history, nor the sweat and efforts of the players and the coaches of the two teams, deciding they should be the protagonists in a heart-stopping game.

They decided the result by discovering a non-existing foul, 2.7’’ before the final buzzer while the exemplary and absolutely legit defense by our player Apollon Tsochlas will be from now on taught during basketball seminars.

We don’t know if Mr. Psarianos realizes that he’s not welcome to our team’s games or that it would be good for him and the sport to not wait for the age limitation and resign.

We expect however that the competent authorities investigate this and take responsibility and at the same time, we make known to everyone that we are no longer going to remain passive and silent to any injustice against us or to behaviors that suggest lack of respect to the history of our team.