By Aris Barkas/ barkas@Eurohoops.net
When Rick Pitino was announced as the new coach of the Greek national team back in November 2019, nobody expected such a roller coaster ride. Almost two years later, Pitino will have the chance to finally coach the Greek national team and will fight against all odds for his ultimate dream, to qualify for the Olympics in one of the four Olympic Qualifying tournaments, the one held in Victoria, Canada.
That was never in the cards for him back in December of 2018, when he first decided, while being banned by the NCAA, to travel to Greece and get the head coaching job of Panathinaikos. However, since then, Pitino has won two Greek championship titles with Panathinaikos in 2019, and in 2020. He has also experienced the turmoil of Olympiacos leaving the court at halftime in the Greek Cup semifinal in protest for the referees and he has been also the center of a controversy when he was announced as the head coach of Panathinaikos in 2019 while also being already the national team coach.
In just two seasons, he has seen pretty much all there is to see about the oddities of Greek basketball.
But then COVID happened and things got even weirder.
The Panathinaikos – Olympiacos saga and the Greek federation elections
When Pitino was first hired as the coach of the Greek national team, the move was considered as a checkmate by longtime Greek federation president and former FIBA Europe president George Vasilakopoulos who was gearing up for the upcoming 2020 federation elections.
Vasilakopoulos, who has had a dominant part in the Greek basketball scene since the 80s and played a huge role in the rise of Greek basketball, was accused by his critics that at least during the last decade he was using the Greek national team as a vehicle for his own promotion while making coaches expendables. Pitino coaching the Greek national team for free, just for the chance to play in the Olympics, was a big win for Vasilakopoulos.
However, the move backfired for Vasilakopoulos when Pitino became the coach of Panathinaikos again just weeks after being named the national team coach. Vasilakopoulos’ side insisted that Pitino has reassured him that he would not take the Panathinaikos job if it was offered to him again due to the problems that the rivalry with Olympiacos may create, but the exact opposite happened.
According to sources close to the situation, since then Vasilakopoulos and Pitino are not in speaking terms and have not communicated directly. Vasilakopoulos went on his way focusing on the elections, which due to COVID have been delayed and may be held in September 2021. Meanwhile, a new sports law in Greece includes among other things an age limit for federation presidents, preventing 82-years old Vasilakopoulos to run again in the elections. Still, he remains a key person in the whole process after being appointed by a court of law as interim president of the federation until the elections.
Yes, it’s too Greek for anyone to fully understand.
The point is that Vasilakopulos remains the president, calling the shots for the national team and leaving Pitino to do his best with limited resources. Other presidential candidates had implied that if they got elected before this summer, then they would have replaced Pitino.
Meanwhile, Pitino arrived in Greece alone one month ago, without any American assistant, contrary to the initial plan, and, as it turned out, without being able to count on a lot of key players.
“You are going to have Giannis”
Just days before leaving for Canada, Rick Pitino appeared in the Greek television show “Pick and Roll” at COSMOTE TV and he was brutally honest. “You will get a big kick out of this”, he said, “My agent and closest friend, Angelo Kotaridis, said to me: “Coach you have to do this, you have to do it. The Greek people are counting on you. You made a commitment. And besides that, you are going to have one of the greatest teams in Greek history. Milwaukee is not going to beat the Nets and you are going to have Giannis Antetokounmpo and Thanasis. Then you are going to have Tyler Dorsey from Maccabi Tel Aviv. And you also persuaded the legend, Vassilis Spanoulis, to return to the national team and be the captain. You got also Printezis, you got Papapetrou, you are going to have a terrific team”. And now, we need Zeus to come back”.
Out of all those players mentioned, nobody is available for the Olympic qualifiers. Giannis and Thanasis are competing in the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, Dorsey preferred to spend the summer preparing for the NBA free agency, Printezis and Papapetrou got minor surgery and Spanoulis also got injured and retired from basketball.
The Greek national team still has EuroLeague standouts Nick Calathes and Kostas Sloukas, Kostas Antetokounmpo who finished the season with the Lakers, former lottery pick George Papagiannis as the starting center but a lot of the big guns are missing.
Plus Pitino didn’t hide his opinion about how the federation is doing things. “We had a great dinner with Spanoulis, he had to pay, not me because we knew that the federation wouldn’t pay and we got Angelo to pick up the check, which he always does. I said to him to let me pick it up and I would take it to the federation and he said that I had a better chance to coach the Lakers next month”, said Pitino while adding about the long trip from Greece to Canada: “We are not the Americans that fly on a private jet. We are going to fly to Amsterdam, Holland, then to Africa, then back to Russia, and then back to Greece to layover and then we start our journey. The federation wants to save some money and if we do all those places, they will get commercial money and then start over”.
Just for the record, the Greek national team arrived in Canada with a stopover in Amsterdam before crossing the Atlantic and no stops in Africa and Russia were involved. It was almost a 25-hour trip until the final destination of Victoria, but the bitter jokes of coach Pitino leave no doubt about his opinion concerning the Greek basketball federation.
The miracle
So in the most unlikely of scenarios, the Greek national team, while missing most of its stars, is having a Hall of Famer on the bench who is not getting paid and has the dream of leading his team to the Olympics.
It’s not a coincidence that upon arriving in Canada, coach Pitino watched together with his players “The miracle”, the movie about the historic upset of the hosting United States over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics.
It goes without saying that this version of the Greek national team is on paper the weakest in recent history and making it to the Olympics against a strong Turkish roster and host Canada will be an even bigger miracle.
And if this happens, Pitino would be in the center of it. Having minimal support on every front, working more than hard for the last month, and facing the challenge of a lifetime.
It’s a long shot, but, by Zeus, Pitino has the chance to avoid a Greek tragedy and create a modern-day Greek myth.