Βy Nikos Varlas/ varlas@eurohoops.net
From 13th of May till the 25th of April of 2014, Olympiacos was on the top of European basketball, but the loss by Real at the 5th quarterfinal, zeroed their chances for a three peat. That didn’t stop the owners of Olympiacos Panagiotis and Giorgos Angelopoulos during the return flight to Athens from expressing their belief that the Reds have just taken a break this season.
“We want to congratulate our players and all the members of our team. What Olympiacos has accomplished is amazing. We fought and we came close to reaching the Final Four and then competing for the three peat. But we have a young team, almost all of our players have multiyear contracts and we feel that we just made a stop. We’ll be back soon at the top of European basketball. If you think about it, two of the four teams that reached the Final Four will have many roster changes during the summer. We won’t change our financial policy, since our revenues from Euroleague are limited, but we’ll be back on top”.
That was the message from Giorgos Angelopoulos who didn’t want to say anything about the situation in the Greek league. “This makes me sick, I don’t want say anything about it”, was his only response after a question on the subject.
On the other hand Panagiotis Angelopoulos expressed his anger against Real. “I have no basketball respect for this team. It’s a mix of good players, who didn’t respect the back to back Euroleague champions. They “beat” Spanoulis and when everything was decided, they were approaching him and giving him a hand. That was a big hypocrisy. Many players that have played for Olympiacos, will be in Milan. Barcelona for example has Papanikolaou and Dorsey – 7 ex players of Olympiacos are going to Euroleague’s Final Four – who have won two and one Euroleague respectively with our jersey. I want to wish Barcelona best of luck”.