It is an unusual incident that took place yesterday in Tbilisi, Georgia, as part of the third match of the group between Turkey, undefeated before this match, Georgia, which for its part still had not managed to defeat anyone at home. Because it is indeed a news item that we are talking about, a news story that concluded an escalation started by a few match facts.
The game ? A rough match, finally won after two extensions by Georgia, thanks in particular to local leaders Sandro Mamukelashvili and Thad McFadden. Why rough? Because the meeting will have been the scene of a double expulsion during the fourth quarter, after a violent clash between Sixers player Furkan Korkmaz on one side and stage local Duda Sanadze on the other, the start of the barfight managed somehow with the return of the two protagonists to the locker room. The sequel will only be more electric, and if in the end the Georgians will go for their first victory almost at the end of the night, the images of the Turkish coach Ergin Ataman freaking out in the last seconds and also expelled then added another little oil on the fire, after an end to the match which will have seen more than 20 seconds being forgotten on the clock, among others.
Furkan Korkmaz getting into it with Georgia’s Duda Sanadze
Fans started throwing cups onto the court ????
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPointsApp) September 4, 2022
Everyone goes home and see you on Tuesday for the rest? Oh no.
Oh no, because a few minutes after the match we learned via the Turkish authorities that Korkmaz would have simply been… attacked by Georgian players when he returned to the locker room, in the corridor crossing the bays of the Tbilisi Arena. By players and by security guards of the room, perhaps even police officers like, and the business starts obviously to make great noise. Ergin Ataman is banned from a press conference, so it’s his assistant who takes his place, who picks up his phone in the middle of an interview, we swim in the middle of a TV series and it’s not over. We learn very quickly that the players targeted by the Turkish accusations are named Goga Bitadze, Tornike Shengelia (the Georgian star absent from the Euro because of an injury) and Duda Sanadze still himthat the police would not have done their job very far from it, and that the Turkish federation logically asked for the surveillance images, otherwise the selection… would literally leave the competition.
Pfiou, respiration.
Where are we this morning? Already, we slept well, from 1h to 4h approximately, thank you for worrying about it. Next ? We would like to tell you more and tell you that a general has broken out between two hotels (of course not, we don’t want to), but nothing too crazy to get your teeth into on this Monday morning if this is that everything should/could be settled during the day and that, in the worst case, all this will not be added to the file of the Turkish-Georgian friendship. Players who go to the hall by taxi in Cologne, an almost empty hall 75% of the time in Tbilisi and security guards who back players to fart the opponentsthat’s also a EuroBasket, even if we would have frankly done without it.
We stay tuned, let the police do the job even if for once we are not very sure, and we are going to get back to a real basketball program today, by closely analyzing the performances of Mario Hezonja and Sasu Saltin. Because it is also and above all that, a Euro.