By Niki Bakouli/ bakouli@eurohoops.net
Costis Zombanakis is not a known name to the general basketball public in Europe. That’s a shame because of his vision for the future of the sport in the old continent, his valuable experience and above all his passion for the game. Eurohoops.net had the chance to talk to him and he revealed not only that the British expansion of the Euroleague was always one of the main targets of Jordi Bertomeu, but also that David Stern once considered the possibility of moving the NBDL in Europe.
– A Greek that was born in Rome, studied in London and then went to Harvard! So his father-in-law’s question was inevitable: “How did you get to love basketball?”
“The truth is it took some time for the “basketball bug” to get me! In Rome I went to community schools and in London I attended an English High School where I mostly played rugby and took on rowing! Back then, basketball did not exist for me!
But everything changed at the age of 13! I came to Greece for the summer holidays and my cousin who used to play basketball for Athens College took me with him for practice. I can still remember the first skills he showed me like dribbling behind my back… That was it! I instantly knew this was my game! I got hooked! So I started playing basketball… on my own!
In my school there was an indoor sports gym, but unfortunately it was mostly used for other sports and games. But luckily a basketball board and a hoop were there. That was more than enough for me to practice all by myself!
Eventually I started following basketball games and news through every newspaper I got my hands on and especially the “Herald Tribune”. It was the era of Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the age of tall centers and the distinctive roles in a basketball team. A lot different than nowadays where “Do-it-all” forwards rule the game. I can still remember Kareem’s trademark sky-hook! I even remember his first poster! That was when I used to go around every newsstand in London for the latest copy of “Sports Illustrated”. You see there was no internet back then. This is how basketball grew on me during my school days in London. I would then spend every summer with my grandmother in Crete and play basketball for local teams in Chania.
Even since the beginning, there was something that connected me to the whole basketball culture. Even though my brother and everyone else around me was into rock music, listening to Jimmy Hendrix, Deep Purple and so on, I was more into soul music…Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder… I was all about the “black music and basketball” scene!
The big frenzy for me started when I went to Harvard. I played basketball every single day and I became a huge Sixers fan! My favourite player back in the day was “Dr J”, Julius Erving! Larry Bird was a close second, but still… I met Larry Bird in Athens when a journalist who knew me from London Towers asked me to help her with an interview with him! I agreed and suggested I could do all the questions for the interview and later on she could write the article in Greek. She agreed and we all went for dinner.
When I graduated from Harvard I moved back to London where I worked for a few years until I returned to Harvard for a post graduate degree. That was when the Jordan mania exploded! I remember leaving a friend’s wedding in Chicago to go to the United Center just to watch him play!
Basketball was always my passion! The same passion a lot of guys in Greece share but they are overshadowed by the hooligans. I am a true “anorak” as the British call guys that are obsessively interested in a certain activity, who know anything there is about it, even the most trivial details.
This definition comes from the coat only nerds wear! An anorak is literally a hooded waterproof coat, and the slang term was originally applied to trainspotters – people whose hobby is hanging around railway stations, monitoring the arrivals/departures of various trains and writing down their serial numbers in little notebooks. Their hobby requires them to wear suitably draught-proof clothing. By extension it has become applied to anyone with an obsessive interest in a subject that is too technical or boring for anyone else to know much about.
Back in the day I knew everything about anyone in basketball! Each players’ weight, their height, if a player was married, I even knew his wife’s name! I knew how much money his contract was worth, his previous teams, everything!”
– How did you get from being a “basketball anorak” to being the president of London Towers?
“I was back in London after my post graduate degree at Harvard, and one day I went to a music store in Brixton – Brixton is the Afro-Caribbean neighbourhood of London – and there I came across a familiar figure! I walked up to the guy, and asked him if he played for Yale. He was Alton Byrd! He was surprised I knew who he was. I had watched a lot of his games when I was in Harvard. He told me he had been playing in Europe for a few years and at the time he was the Head Coach of Crystal Palace. “Those guys know …a victim when they see one!” (He chuckled!) So he invited me to watch a practice of the team. When I did go, he asked me if I would be interested in contributing financially to the team. I asked for a number and as soon as I heard it I immediately responded: “I am in!”
At the time Crystal Palace was in the 2nd Division League. We got promoted to the 1st Division League and I started dreaming! I had a vision of something big, without spending a lot! London had two more teams then. I contacted the owners of London Towers and we agreed on a merger! We were going to profit from the best qualities of both clubs. We kept the London Towers brand name and their General Manager, Rick Taylor. We contributed with the Basketball Arena since Crystal Palace’s court cost less than Wembley where the Towers were playing before small audiences. But we had to lose the Crystal Palace name, a club with great history. But we meant well. We had a bigger project in mind.
I went through the whole Galis-mania as well! I was a huge fan of Nick Galis and I couldn’t stand Ioannidis. My friends used to send me videotapes with basketball games from the Greek League. In the meanwhile we became Champions of England! In a trip in Athens I met Tasos Stefanou, the General Manager of Panathinaikos. He informed me there was going to be a new European League, called “Euroleague”, and that London was needed in this league. He suggested I should have a meeting with Jordi Bertomeu. This is how we entered the League with a 3-year contract.
At first I thought the Euroleague was going to be a private league. At this point I need to clarify that my goal is not to make a profit out of basketball. I would be crazy to believe anything else. But let me also point out that it wouldn’t be wise for me, to have a hobby that could destroy me or put me under a lot of stress! So I expected that Euroleague would be the NBA of Europe. I can remember that ever since 2001, I told Jordi that the best thing for every team that participated in the Euroleague, would be to leave their national leagues. Not everyone can have the attitude the Giannakopoulos’ brothers have towards their team and the money they spend. We couldn’t stay in business with 80 tickets sold against Brighton in the English League, when against Maccabi in Euroleague we had 15.000 fans! I had pointed out to Jordi that only through a private league, one can build a franchise. That is essential for the Euroleague and every team participating in it!
During the second year of the Euroleague, I realized that none of this would ever happen. I had already spent a lot of money, a lot more than what I planned, so I decided I should cut my losses and I announced I would withdraw from the Euroleague. I stayed with the London Towers, we tried to find other projects, different leagues to participate in. I even had a very interesting meeting with David Stern, in order to explore bringing the NBDL to England. You can imagine what an honor that would have been for me. I tried to think everything through, every potential, every possible outcome and come to a decision. My business was flourishing and the risk was too high… I couldn’t do it.
Long story short, another league was not going to add anything new to the European basketball stage. There were already the ULEB leagues, the leagues of FIBA Europe and the Euroleague. The already confused basketball fan could only get more confused! So there was no point in starting anything new.
While I was with the London Towers things were going reasonably well in the British league. In 2005, however, the league board made a huge mistake. We were in discussions with SKY, and they offered us the time zone right after the Premier League games. That was when the new digital tv channel of ITV offered us 3 times the money SKY was offering.
I believed it would be a huge mistake to leave SKY, a channel that already had 15-20 million viewers and that would allow us to develop the league’s marketing value and attract more sponsors. Unfortunately the league went with ITV Digital who then went bankrupt. Of course when we went back to SKY and tried to sell our rights back to them, the answer was a huge no. This is how the English League ended, until SKY took over again 6 or 7 years later.
This proved that just like in every business, when at some point you have to make a crucial decision, you always have to look for the long term results. Short sighted decisions may lead to big mistakes. That is when I decided I would sponsor the children and teenagers until a new sponsor takes over, but I would quit everything else. That was until 2008 when the people from Rethymno came to meet me…”
– Who brought the people from Rethymno in contact with you?
“A journalist friend, Thanasis Asproulias, who had interviewed me when I was with the London Towers, informed the people of Rethymno B.C. about my love for basketball. He also told them that my father’s village was less than 30 minutes away from Rethymno. So he suggested they should contact me, which they did! I had already had a few businesses in Greece and I wanted something to do in Crete as well. I always though Crete was a “sure thing”! And I loved the guys that came to meet me: Dimitris Tzetzos, George Mamalakis and Nikos Sarantinos. Mr Sarantinos was instantly knicknamed “Martin Luther King” by the rest of us because he always “had a dream”!
A few unkind people have told me that if it weren’t for me, Rethymno Basketball would have never achieved anything. But they couldn’t be more wrong! If you want to create something new and in particular if you’re not there physically, you have to have the right people to work with and rely on! You have to have people who have faith in the project and are willing to work hard. You can’t have a project without a plan. The Rethymno GM,Triantafillos reminded me of the General Manager of the London Towers. He could build the team, sell the season tickets and …serve pop corn at half time! We all agreed to follow the American style of management and create a community team. Mr Sarantinos had it all, except for the “know how”. That was where I came in”.
– Is it true that before you took over Rethymno AEGEAN, you sponsored Panionios (in 2003)?
“The company I owned at the time in Greece with my partner Stelios Xenakis had developed a brand called Freddoccinno and it became a sponsor of Panionios, after a request from my close friend coach Georgios Kalafatakis. But my experience from that deal was not the best. There were delays in delivering the things we had agreed on. They delayed placing the brand name in the team jerseys and we were never on a TV game.”
– Rethymno AEGEAN has 120 sponsors (big and small ones) who kept their faith in your program, for the past five in-a-row years. Is this one of the possible solutions for a team to survive?
“It is not just a solution! It is the only solution, but I am afraid even this cannot guarantee success. For now it seems to be working but we cannot feel safe because of the economic crisis that affects everyone, including our sponsors. So the only thing we can do is stay within our budget limits, without interfering with our business project and the way we run our team.
For example, we have a person in charge of P.R., Dimitris Tzetsos, he has an assistant and so on… If you compare Rethymno’s expenses to other teams’ expenses you will see that we spend more. And I don’t mean the players’ roster budget. Because if you want to have certain sponsors and a basketball court packed with fans you will have to follow a certain model. Otherwise you have to try something else, like to oblige your head coach to have volunteers as assistants! You can’t have a restaurant if you don’t have any chairs, can you?”
– Last year Rethymno AEGEAN was fourth in Basket League OPAP. What’s the next goal? Because I read – in one of your very few interviews – that when you took over, you asked if you were going to win the title.
“The most simple way to show the people of Rethymno and the fans my way of thinking. was to ask them if there was a chance to win the championship. They said I was crazy. Then I asked them what was our goal then, before I explained to them that our goal is to have 2 hours of fun on Saturday or on Sunday, in a great atmosphere, as great as it can get in an arena in Greece, where indoor arenas and stadiums are built by the government only according to political criteria. In the U.S.A for example anyone that wants to build a basketball arena needs to answer a few questions like whether the mayor of the town supports the project, if the community supports it, who are the investors that support it, the marketing plan and so on. The government there does not build arenas to watch them get ruined.
So when the people of Rethymno told me that a title was not an option, I told them we should create a “product” that could not be the coach, but the players. We had to build this “product” around the players that are going to make up the team. So we decided to follow a less tactical game style the fans would easily follow and they would really enjoy, which is what in basketball we call “run and gun”. So we are looking for players who, first of all, have a great personality and then are really athletic. You will see Brent Petway and you will understand what we mean. He is 2.03 m and he can dunk with his head”.
– How important is it for your players to be actual citizens of Rethymno, since you have so many community programs like “Shoot from the perimeter” and “Rethymno Assist”?
“Apart from the players scouting and profiling, we are really interested in the character and the personality of every player we bring to the team. Since we try to build a club that runs on its own funds and that brings something back to the community of Rethymno, the players should be able to have a big part in that. There shouldn’t be anyone that wouldn’t want to attend social events, that wouldn’t represent the team in the proper way, the way we want.
The good thing about players from the United States is that many of them come from poor communities, and basketball was the one thing that helped them get out of that and lead them to a better life. So they are well aware of the whole “give back to the community” idea ever since they were in High School. It is something common for every NBA player as well, even the superstars. Our No1 representative in the community is Brent Petway by far! He will always find time to play with the kids and then in the evening he will attend a night club in order to play some of his R ‘n’ B music as a DJ! He is amazing! His dunks are incredible! I believe he should stay in Greece and build on his reputation through camps and other activities”.
– What can you say about the British people’s relationship with basketball. What do you think about the Euroleague’s decision to explore the British market now, with London hosting the next two consecutive Euroleague Final Four tournaments?
“Jordi Bertomeu came to Athens to meet me five years ago. He asked me to build a team in London again. When I asked why would I ever want to get into that again, he told me he would guarantee me a 5-year contract with the Euroleague. “Why do you want to destroy me? You are supposed to be my friend!” I replied jokingly, before I even asked how many home games we would have every season. When he told me that we would have at least 5 home games every year with the new Euroleague format, I explained to him that this could not be done.
I once told Jordi that if he wanted to take the Euroleague to all the big cities he aimed for, he should create a competition format that would have 20-30 home games every season! 20 to 30 games in every big city, every year! This would allow him to find sponsors and people that want to get involved with the whole Euroleague project from all around the world! Even from the United States of America. Any billionaire who couldn’t buy an NBA team, would be interested in acquiring a team in London, Rome, or Paris. Have you got any idea how many potential buyers wanted to meet with me and “talk business” when I was in London Towers and there was the possibility of a private European League?
I assured Bertomeu that if all he had to offer were 6 or 7 home games he would get nothing out of these big cities he wanted to expand to. He could only attract a few extremely rich Russians. No other European, let alone American, would want to participate in something like that.”
– It seems like they need to find new markets with money, to support the general system…
“First of all they need to decide on what exactly they want to achieve. Have teams in big cities of small countries, or teams in small cities of big countries? In London you have to compete with football. that is a huge part of the British culture. There are 4 national divisions, plus the local leagues. Then there is Rugby. A kid living in London can do all sorts of things. The sports and entertainment options a kid can choose from are endless! The financial cost of building a basketball brand in London is huge and the competition is fierce. And without a doubt, no project will ever progress with only 6 games at the top level every year. To invest money into something like this you either have to be too naive, or too much of a…”malakas”, or to have more money than you need and don’t care how much you lose.
If you asked me if I would return to London to run a new project, now having all this experience, I would answer there is absolutely no chance! I might think about it if Bertomeu told me it was going to be a private league with big games every week. But being a bit older and a lot more experienced as a businessman now, I would really have to give it some serious thinking before making a decision.
One of the things that bug me the most is that they always have to follow the football format. In everything! Even the song of the Euroleague sounds a lot like the Champions League song. This really gets to me, because it is like admitting that basketball is football’s poor cousin.
In southern Europe anti-American culture is very much alive, even in basketball. Administrators, coaches, owners etc. believe they have a distinct basketball culture and must develop the sport accordingly. To me that’s like saying that in Greece we have our own culture in Thai cuisine and we should cook Thai meals according to Greek tradition.
I think that’s why David Stern once told me he was mostly interested in Northern Europe. You know the NBA always thinks through every move it makes. They do all the research they have to and calculate everything, having in mind every possible scenario. And the research so far indicates that NBA expansion in Europe is in no one’s best interest.”
– Would you be interested in playing in Eurocup?
“Until I see something that meets the needs of the teams that do not participate in the Euroleague I am not interested in it. And there are 600-800 more professional basketball teams in Europe. Why would I want to participate in the Eurocup if that means loosing more money? For Rethymno Basketball Club to participate in a European League, either the Euroleague would have to expand …a lot, or there should be something really good for all the other teams like ours, the less fortunate teams”
– You were invited to talk about an alternative approach to basketball competition below the Euroleague level. Could the NCAA model be followed in Europe?
“Jordi was kind enough to allow me to float my ideas to participants in this year’s EuroCup. Basically my suggestion was that the teams that don’t qualify for the Euroleague automatically, should participate in end of season regional tournaments, leading to a Final Four. Just like the NCAAs! Boy did that go badly… Representatives from every team that participated in the Eurocup were gathered in an amazing building, in a unique conference room and everyone was feeling like a million dollars when a ”party-pooper” from Greece started talking about why it is a mistake to participate in a competition like that. It was just the wrong audience!
Something a lot of people don’t know is the number of teams that did not accept the invite to participate in the Eurocup. Scavolini for instance had qualified but decided not to participate. So did Lagun Aro. We would have done exactly the same, had we qualified”.