By Nikos Varlas/ varlas@eurohoops.net
What could be better two days before Christmas than a “remake” of last year’s championship game at the Final Four in Berlin? European champions CSKA Moscow (12-1 record) are hosting runners-up Fenerbahce Istanbul (8-5) in what is a very big game for Round 14 of the regular season!
This matchup that brings about a new encounter between Dimitris Itoudis and Zeljko Obradovic! These two rivals are after the same goal in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague, the trophy. The two of them, however, shared a (basketball) life that was like a fairytale for 13 years together on the bench of Panathinaikos Athens!
Obradovic as head coach and Itoudis as his close associate and alter ego, worked together for the Greens from the 1999-2000 season up to 2011-12 and made history with 23 titles! Five EuroLeague trophies, 11 championships and 7 Greek cups! The two of them, aside from longstanding friends, are also best men with close family ties.
After 2012 their paths parted and Itoudis, after a successful season as Banvit Bandirma’s head coach, has been the boss at CSKA since the summer of 2014. He’s in his third season at Russia’s great club and so far in the EuroLeague, he has the impressive record of 62 wins and 10 defeats!
He celebrated the 2016 EuroLeague title last spring and at the same time won the Alexander Gomelskiy EuroLeague Coach of the Year award. His list of achievements with CSKA includes titles in the VTB league in 2015 and 2016.
Itoudis is an enthusiast of modern basketball who has led his team’s offense to amazing productivity and very impressive numbers. CSKA scores 92 points on average this season, while they concluded the last one with 91 points per game!
Obradovic – or, if you like, “The Lord of the Rings” – is the only coach in history who has eight EuroLeague trophies! He won them with four different teams: Partizan (1992), Badalona (1994), Real Madrid (1995), and, of course, with Panathinaikos (2000, 2002, 2007, 2009, 2011).
He is the coach with the most wins in the modern history of the EuroLeague (over 15 seasons) from 2000 onwards. His record is 231 wins and 100 defeats! He has won the Alexander Gomelskiy EuroLeague Coach of the Year award two times (2007, 2009) and has already managed to reach the Final Four twice with his new team. What’s still missing and what he’s still after as Fenerbahce‘s coach is his ninth title in the EuroLeague, which would be the first for the club and for Turkey in general!
With Fenerbahce, he has won two Turkish league championships (2014, 2016) and one Turkish cup (2016). He has great accomplishments at the national-team level, as well. As Serbia’s coach he won the silver medal in the 1996 Olympic Games, the gold medal in the 1997 EuroBasket, bronze in 1999 in the same competition and of course the gold in the World Championship that took place in Athens in 1998!
What counts now is the present and the future. In such a big game as tonight’s, a lot of people will be looking at the two benches as much as they will at the actual game! It’s CSKA vs. Fenerbahce for the first time after the final in Berlin, but also Itoudis vs. Obradovic. So far in the battles between them in the EuroLeague, the Greek coach is ahead with a 3-1 record.
Who’s going to win this “hot” game in freezing Moscow? #GameOn!