By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Three-time EuroLeague champion with Olympiacos and Panathinaikos Vassilis Spanoulis is the latest EuroLeague Basketball figure to be named Legend and will receive his nod this Wednesday (April 20), as Olympiacos Piraeus faces AS Monaco for Game 1 of their playoff series.
Spanoulis, the EuroLeague all-time leading scorer, announced his retirement in 2021 following an illustrious career and is just the eighth member of the EuroLeague Basketball Legends club.
Per EuroLeague:
Vassilis Spanoulis, a trailblazer whose exquisite talent and timing marked an epoch in the international game, will become the newest Euroleague Basketball Legend on Wednesday, when the team he led to new heights last decade, Olympiacos Piraeus, opens the playoffs at home.
Spanoulis, a three-time continental champion, Final Four MVP and EuroLeague All-Decade player whose eight seasons on the All-EuroLeague Team are the most by any player this century, will be honored before a sea of his adoring red-and-white fans when Olympiacos hosts AS Monaco in Game 1 of their best-of-five series at Peace and Friendship Stadium.
Spanoulis becomes the eighth player to receive Euroleague Basketball’s highest distinction, after Theo Papaloukas, Juan Carlos Navarro, Ramunas Siskauskas, Sarunas Jasikevicius, Dimitris Diamantidis, Mirsad Turkcan and Felipe Reyes. The late Dusan Ivkovic, one of Spanoulis’s coaches at Olympiacos, was honored as a Euroleague Basketball Legend, too.
Among his long list of EuroLeague accomplishments, Spanoulis finished his playing career as the competition’s career leader in an astounding six statistical categories at the time he retired last summer: points (4,445), free throws made (1,131), fouls drawn (1,583), performance index rating (4,183), assists (1,607) and field goals made (1,403). He remains the EuroLeague’s all-time scoring leader thanks to having averaged 12.4 points over a remarkable span of 15 seasons.
Photo credit: EuroLeague