Last night in Galatasaray’s 90-75 loss to Brose Bamberg, Austin Daye, having played in Turkish Airlines EuroLeague for the first time since the game against Saski Baskonia on December 2, scored 20 points shooting (5/7) from the field but couldn’t prevent his team’s loss. US-born player, who did an exclusive interview after the game for TrendBasket, said that their errors on defense were the main reason to lose the game.
It was a difficult loss. It’s probably one of our worst defensive efforts. Bamberg is a really well-coached team. They ran their system great tonight and they did the things that they needed to do to win. For us, we didn’t do the things we needed to do to win. We had a lot of errors on the defensive end. It’s frustrating.
My performance was good. I shot pretty efficiently like I’ve been doing all year. It’s just difficult because we’re not doing the things on the defensive end to win games. We’re not helping ourselves and we do many things in practice but I don’t think we’re doing the right things to win games. It’s difficult because I have seen both ends of the spectrum: Championship NBA team and a losing team in the NBA. There is a difference; there’s a difference in focus, a different mentality. We gotta try to change it.
Sacrificing in spite of not getting healed completely, considering he could help the team, Daye pointed out that watching his team play on the sidelines was a tough period to process.
I had a bone bruise in my ankle. We thought it was just a regular ankle sprain and I found out I had a bone bruise in my ankle. That’s why I was experiencing so much pain for those weeks, in those four games I was playing. And I wasn’t really playing a lot. It has been difficult dealing with the injury. In the last couple of weeks, I sat out games because I was trying to come back early to help the team. I’m getting better but I’m not %100. I still have pain here and there but doctors told me I would experience that if I came early. I wanted to sacrifice for the team and come back early because I felt I can help the team.