"Nothing than the semi-finals will be another delusion and failure..."

 

This will be probably the most important year for the Hellenic Sport in the recent past: Athens will finally host the Olympic Games (stolen by the economical interests eight years ago), and all of the basketball fans through the world are waiting for this rendezvous which follows the World Basketball Championships in Indianapolis, the historical edition that had the first defeat(s) for the USA team since the beginning of the “Open Age”.

 

If everyone is waiting for the angry revenge of the stars-and-stripes, humiliated at home by Argentina, Serbia Montenegro and Spain, there are many hopes coming from all around the world: Lithuania won its first EuroBasket after the independence from the Soviet Union, New Zealand will desire to show that the 4^th place in Indianapolis wasn’t a one-time-event, Italy will play with the same infinite hearth that brought the “Azzurri” to the podium in Sweden, China with the tower Yao Ming and the enormous steps made in basketball won’t be in Athens just to visit the Acropolis. Australia, Puerto Rico and Angola will complete the Olympic Tournament...of course the national team of Greece will as well.

 

After the catastrophic editions of France ’99 (the Hellenic National Team eliminated after the first round) and Turkey ’01 (9^th place), last summer in Sweden the Ioannidis – band finally was 5^th. Nothing impressive, nothing awful; considering the past it has been a positive step, but we can’t deny the Greek national team had the potential to play for the podium...one poor game against Italy in the quarters and all the dreams disappeared in forty minutes. Neither the prestigious victory against Serbia Montenegro could hide the delusion: the boys with the jersey of “Hellas” had, at least, to play the semis.

 

Something went wrong, and there are many reasons to explain the Scandinavian failure:

1. The summer preparation started too early, and the whole team arrived tired to the games.
2. The attitude: against strong (on the paper) teams, like Turkey and Croatia, the Greek played with humility, like a team. Maybe without showing a good basketball, but fighting till the end to win. Against Italy, the most underrated team in Sweden, they went on court with the same attitude of a friendly game. We could save only two player from this Waterloo: Giorgos Sigalas and Dimosthenis Ntikoudis.
3. Coach Ioannidis didn’t show to have change his mind and opinions about basketball, a sport that has changed and developed a lot in the last years. Defence is always what brings victories, but “sometimes” it’s required to score: Greek team had no more than 70-75 points in their hands (we are talking about strong opponents, like Italy that showed a clinic of defence).
4. Coach Ioannidis too made some mistakes choosing some players instead of others: Rentzias for example is one of them. Actually he can’t even play in the starting five of an average team like Ulker Constantinople. Hatzivrettas, who missed completely the live-or-die game against Italy, another one. And what was Papapanikolaou doing there? 

 

 

Without a strong inversion nothing will change: Greece will still play an old-style basketball, with the results of last decade: the last medal was conquered in Zagreb (1989, silver medal) and then years of humiliating 4^th places, with the recent disasters of Dijon and Attaleia.

 

There is a fact: this is not a bad period for the Hellenic basketball, the financial problems of the Greek clubs don’t concern the players: there are excellent Greeks playing in Italy (Mihalis Kakiouzis, the man who changed the destiny of the mediocre Montepaschi Siena last season, bringing the team from Tuscany to the Euroleague Final Four) or Spain (Dimosthenis Ntikoudis, who stole the starting five to players like Oberto and Tomasevic in Pamesa Valencia, one of the strongest candidate to the Euroleague victory in the season). And the Greek league has many indigenous protagonists, Iraklis Thessaloniki is 3^rd in the standings after 14 match-days with a full-Greek roster, and the axis Dimitris Diamantidis – Lazaros Papadopoulos is the best axis point guard-center of the league. The “old” captain of AEK, Nikos Hatzis, is not even considered by Ioannidis but he’s one of the greatest fighting shooting-guard in Europe. Kostas Tsartsaris, Nestoras Kommatos, Vasilis Spanoulis are key players of their team, and they can’t be forgotten like happened for the EuroBasket of Sweden.

 

The mentality must change. For years the Greek national basketball has left at home its two best guards, Panagiotis Liadelis and Giorgos Diamantopoulos: just excuses, “they have not the attitude to play a strong defence… they don’t help the passing-game, they want too many shoots in a game…”. This is just blabbering: the national team needs talent, and there’s a lot actually: the Olympic Games will be the last occasion for the Greek basketball, that started the 90’s with 15,000 spectators for the home games of Olympiakos even with Belgian teams and now has 1/10 of this attendance for an important derby like OSFP and AEK.

 

Nothing than the semi-finals will be another delusion and failure: with the same mentality of the past, with the “dead basketball walking”, without the fantasy, with the strength on court and the talent watching the television, the failure and the delusion are simply a written destiny.

Eight months before the Olympics it’s not to late to recognize the mistakes from Scandinavia, the possibility to breathe fresh air, to have a national team who can play a different and actual basketball, not the classical Hellenic walking-game. Some of the old “dinosaurs”, players that have done everything in the past, who are having ridiculous seasons or simply who don’t worth the national team, should stay at home. Actually, Greece has an interesting young generation, players born after 1980, that could bring this “fresh air” to the national team and for an effect domino to the whole Hellenic basketball movement: Vasilis Spanoulis, Hristos Tapoutos, Kostas Vasileiadis, and Lazaros Papadopoulos. None of them went to Sweden and now they are playing great seasons in the A1, while some members of the Ioannidis’ squad are relegated to the bench: Dimitris Papanikolaou, useless with Panathinaikos; Efthimis Rentzias, bencher with the jersey of Ulker. Some of them have to be on the Olympic national team.