By Nikos Varlas/ varlas@eurohoops.net
Greek basketball federation president George Vasilakopoulos has said that until the new year the Greek national team will have a new coach and December is the month of negotiations. At the present moment Fotis Katsikaris has the lead in the race for replacing Ilias Zouros. Panagiotis Giannakis follows and there are also two dark horses, Joan Plaza and David Blatt.
Vasilapoulos fist choice seems to be Katsikaris, since he has every desirable quality: He is experienced, he is respected in every level, he have coached in the past many NT members and of course he is… Greek. There isn’t any contact with him yet, but in the following days Vasilakopoulos is expected to speak to him in order to explore the possibility of a collaboration.
Katsikaris has a contract with Bilbao and he will need the special permit of the team in order to be the part time coach of the Greek NT. It has been done in other occasion (the most recent one is the example of then Unicaja’s coach Aito Garcia Reneses in 2008 when he was also the Spanish NT’s coach) and there is a way to avoid any possible problem with the ACB’s rule which doesn’t allow the coaches of its teams to be also national team’s coaches.
Aside all that, the Greek national team manager George Kolokithas pushes towards the direction of Giannakis, while Joan Plaza and David Blatt are also considered like possible alternatives. We will know till the end of the month if Katsikaris will get the job, or if, in the case of a disagreement with him, some other candidate will step forward.