Red Star's basketball team secured a place in the ABA League semi-finals with a victory over Cedevita Olimpija in the fourth and deciding game of the quarter-finals (95:86), but controversy erupted after the match.

At the press conference, Zvezdan Mitrović, coach of Cedevita Olimpija, stated that the match was a "loss to the sport, not his team."

Due to this statement, Red Star issued an immediate statement directly addressing the coach of Cedevita Olimpija. The full statement is as follows:

- KK Red Star Meridianbet has secured its place in the ABA League semi-finals – entirely deserved after the deciding game played in Belgrade on Friday.

However, the post-match statement by the visiting team’s coach, which attempts to diminish our triumph and qualification by claiming "it was a loss to the sport," is considered extremely inappropriate and, more importantly, does not reflect the truth or the events that occurred on the court!

We believe that all spectators in the arena and those watching on television saw how Cedevita Olimpija players played the second game in Ljubljana, often crossing the foul line without being sanctioned (after which we congratulated the opponent sportsmanlike without any mention of the referees).

They played in the same manner in the third game in Belgrade, where our team should have been awarded at least 50 free throws, instead of the 35 given.

We hope that such statements, which essentially represent a loss to the sport, and not the events on the court that should have ended the series in our favor in Ljubljana, are not a prelude to what our team will face in the continuation of the competition, and clearly creating an atmosphere where our team will not have equal conditions to play...

KK Red Star Meridianbet – concludes the statement from Red Star.