If he considers returning to Turkey to work:
For sure. My daughters ask me this every day, by the way. Even though they like it in France, they always think we’ll go back, so they ask when. I needed to play against Galatasaray in İstanbul and they told me, ‘You’re going to İstanbul without taking us with you’. I said ‘but it’s a weekday, you have to go to school’. Doesn’t matter we can be absent for a day or two. I’m still young, with years of working in front of me.
All the injuries, losses, and struggles for Dijon throughout the first half of the season:
People who are following the team so far did not know what was going on inside the roster. When I signed as a coach, the roster was almost finished. We were supposed to sign two backup guards and a 4-man. Out of these three players, only one should be American, the other two should be Bosman. It’s very, very, very difficult to find the Bosman guards who fit the French league because most teams have quick American guards at this position. Players who are extremely good scorers and one-on-one players. So, there are not a lot of players on the market.
We found Joshiko Saibou and the kid [barely practiced with the team] because of his commitment to German NT and the injuries. All preseason, we played with one PG; Sek Henry was playing PG. We didn’t even have a PG in the youth team to help us.
We couldn’t compete [because of the injuries on the roster], it was ugly to even watch because defenses were focusing on Holston who was our main player. We were hoping for our injured players to return.
We signed Khadeem Carrington, an under-the-radar player, to replace Sek Henry at the 2. If he went to the market, we couldn’t sign him. But before his checkup, he said he was not OK, so we waited 72 hours for another checkup. Long story short, he waited 10 days until he made the first practice with the team. And he came a little bit out of shape from Seville.
To explain [our losses] was not easy because people did not know what was going on inside. We tried to keep the confidence of our guys. People in the club were trying to search for solutions. I told them ‘OK, we need to be patient; we need to see what we can do with the whole roster together. Then we can make judgments and see what the team needs.’