When you look, last PAO's good team was in the 16-17 (17-18 had few additions)Whole team was basically new except Gist and Calathes. You had James, Singleton, Rivers, Nichols, Bourousis, Gentile arrived and also Pascual came in the 2rd round of the Euroleague. So no preseason with him as a coach and that team looked really well. And if these transfers which we are waiting for turns out as they should be big names then this squad is much better. Also I think Euroleague in this moment has weaker teams than back then. No Russian teams, Turkish teams in this moment doesn't look strong as they used to, especially Efes. Also Ataman made that championship team in one summer. Completely new team. And I do think that team didn't have some special signings except Larkin. Micic was backup in the Zalgiris. Beaubois solid in Baskonia, Simon nothing but starter in that crazy Milano team. Motum was average in the Zalgiris, Moerman horrible in the Barcelona...and it turned out great. Panathinaikos is still waiting 3, 4 main transfers. In this moment we only have at PG and C starters in the team. And when you look at the names you have Sloukas who is top 5 at his position, Lessort ALL Euroleague team, Grant Eurocup MVP, Vildoza who can be the best or the worst and pretty solid Greek core, maybe the best in last 10 years. I am not saying we will be champions, not at all, but I do actually think everything except top 5, 6 at least is huge failure. Also keep in mind OAKA will be full almost every game. I would not be satisfied with just the playoffs. If we get home court adventage and lose against better team in that moment (17. Fener, 18. Real) I am fine. But to fight for the playoffs and then be destroyed against 1st or 2nd seed shouldn't be ok to anyone.
On one side, we can just agree to disagree on what we expect from our team.
On the other side, the 16-17 team didn't just have Calathes and Gist. Pappas, Feldeine, Fotsis were also part of last year's team. That's not a negligible percentage.
So the team from 15-16 went to the playoffs, made additions and then under the same coach was prepared for the new year. Btw, Pedoulakis was fired just because we lost badly to Oly early in the season.
Also you know that sometimes a new coach has short terms benefits for a team. The result wasn't anything thrilling. We went to the playoffs again (with the exact same result again). The sample is so small that it's not obvious to me that Pasqual did much better than what Pedoulakis would have done. He took a playoffs team, which had already undergone summer camp with the same coach as last year and didn't do incredibly better (sure he won the greek league which was lost last year from some incredible clutch performances by Spanoulis).
If you account for the lack of competition, yeah, one can see this as an opportunity but I tend to not underestimate anyone at this level. At least not until I see some actual play.
Lastly, people bring Ataman's example in Efes. There is a reason why this is considered special. These things don't just happen every year
I mean, look, I hope and pray that he does the same thing, but I can't base my expectation on a miracle that happened once.
So just to clarify, my expectations aren't to end up 8th and get easy swept like in 16 and 17. I hope:
*we play good basketball (I have said this many times and it gets overlooked in favor of results)
*the fans come back to OAKA
*there is effort from the players (who seemed bored these past years)
*there is actual coaching (not like the many weird decisions we've seen lately)
and in the end we fight for a playoff spot and if we do, we have a good series. That's it.
Pangos is always injured. Sestina is also weird transfer for me same as Willis to Efes. Both Eurocup players and that's maybe too strong competition for them. Madar instead Calathes..hmmm. we shall see. Rest looks good
