Turkey’s game against Georgia was followed by controversies on and off the court. 

With 4:48 left to play in the fourth quarter, Furkan Kokrmaz and Duda Sanadze got involved in a scuffle after Georgian’s foul on Philadelphia 76ers forward.

Both players were disqualified, but according to the Turkish National Team, three Georgian players and security guards attacked Furkan Korkmaz in the tunnel after he left the court.

According to Ismail Senol from beIN, the trio that attacked Korkmaz was Tornike Shengelia, Goga Bitadze, and Sanadze.

Turkish basketball federation vice-president Omer Onan claimed that Turkey would leave Eurobasket if required footage would not be provided.

That statement came after Turkey’s assistant Coach Hakan Demir told in the press conference that the three Georgian players and security personnel attacked Korkmaz.

The Coach said that although this kind of incident causes a huge disappointment, he reiterated that they are there in the court to play basketball and chose Georgia as a brother country. 

Demir also added that they missed 22 seconds which put Georgia’s advantage.

With 21.6 seconds left in the second overtime, Cedi Osman tried to make an intentional foul but received an unsportsmanlike one instead.

After seeing such a decision, head coach Ergin Ataman got so heated that he got in one of the referee’s faces and was eventually ejected.

Sanadze’s View

Duda Sanadze was one of the protagonists in the incident during the game between Georgia and Turkey.

Sanadze and Korkmaz faced each other after exchanging words and everything escalated. 

Sanadze shared that he was a bit surprised that everything escalated that fast. He admitted that he was very angry after the ref’s call because he thought it was a clean block. Sanadze also believes that Korkmaz might have misunderstood what he said when he walked past him. 

When asked about the tunnel incident, he admitted that there were some contacts but the whole situation was not as bad as the opponent team was saying.

Meanwhile, the Georgian basketball association released a statement accusing Turkey of provocation. 

However, Sanadze did not agree that Turkey was trying to provoke someone. Eventually, Sanadze expressed his apology and hoped that it would not happen again as they are neighboring countries.