By Achilleas Mavrodontis / info@eurohoops.net
Olympiacos forward Kostas Papanikolaou is ready to return to action after a challenging season and an upper back surgery and talked to Eurohoops during the team’s EuroLeague media day ahead of the new campaign.
Despite the difficulties, “Pap” used his time off in the best way possible, as he became a father in March. “Through my injury, I had the chance to spend a lot of time with my family and our baby. I had the chance to bond with my kid, to do stuff with her and it gave me a foundation to focus on the new season preparations”.
This season, Olympiacos returns to the Greek League and the Greek Cup after two years, and Papanikolaou is looking forward to competing for more titles.
“We are all happy to return. Olympiacos is a club that has to look after titles. Now we have two more. Especially with the level of difficulty in EuroLeague, it will help us a lot. In the past, you would make scenarios about how many wins it takes to advance [to the quarterfinals]. Now you can’t do that, the level is too high and we will see incredible games”.
Olympiacos returns to action with one big absence, that of Vassilis Spanoulis, who announced his retirement this summer and Papanikolaou also talked about his long-term captain and teammate.
“Not going to lie, it wasn’t easy to begin our preparations and not seeing Vassilis somewhere on the court. We were used to seeing him. Unfortunately, this would happen eventually and no one can escape it. You just have to move forward. It was for sure very weird that Vassilis wasn’t here”, Papanikolaou explained. “His spot in the lockers is still intact and no one is going to change that. I think it’s the right thing to do, a sign of respect.”
Despite this big absence, the Greek forward appears optimistic about this upcoming campaign.
“The truth is that I am very optimistic and the reason for that is that I see smiles in training. I see a positive atmosphere and a nice aura. This is always a very positive sign at the beginning of preparation. So with that in mind and what we’ve seen, that makes me very optimistic. Of course, there are still many things that need to be done in order for the team to bond and present something good”