By Nikos Varlas/ varlas@eurohoops.net
On Thursday night, Brose Bamberg will host Olympiacos Piraeus in the Brose Arena for a showdown of great interest. The home team, whose record is 5-6, needs the win to improve their position in the standings, while the Reds (9-2) are after their sixth win in a row in order to stay in first place before current co-leader CSKA Moscow visits Piraeus next week!
Freak City is inhospitable to Olympiacos!
There are several interesting facts linking these two rivals, including players who have competed on both teams and have their own unique paths in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague. But before we get to them, we have to shed some light on the German team’s impressive tradition against one of the giants of the EuroLeague, Olympiacos!
The two of them have faced each other six times so far, and Bamberg is prevailing in this matchup with a 4-2 record. The most impressive fact? Olympiacos have never won in Freak City, which is proving to be quite inhospitable to them. Thursday’s visitors count three defeats in as many trips to Bamberg!
The first one was in the 2010-11 season, when Bamberg beat Olympiacos 73-61. The best players for the winning team that night were the current Olympiacos player Brian Roberts, with 23 points, and former Olympiacos player Kyle Hines, with 14 points.
The German team’s second home win against Olympaicos was achieved in March of 2016, during the Top 16, with a score of 72-71. Who decided the game? Current Olympiacos player Janis Strelnieks, by scoring a three-pointer four seconds before the expiration!
The only team they have never beat away from home!
Bamberg’s third win at home took place last season, when Andrea Trinchieri’s team beat Olympiacos 82-68. Its perfect home record against the Greek team is even more impressive considering that, of the 15 teams that the Reds are facing this season in the EuroLeague, Bamberg is the only one they have never beaten outside Piraeus!
Four players, all of them champions!
In the modern era of the EuroLeague, there are four very important players who have played in the colors of both Bamberg and Olympiacos!
Those are Roberts, Hines and – new to the list since last summer – Strelnieks and Daniel Hackett, each of whom switched from one team’s backcourt to the other’s.
What is the common element that binds them? All of them have won domestic and/or EuroLeague titles playing for one or both teams!
Roberts played in Freak City for three seasons (two in the EuroLeague) in a very successful stint with three German League (2010, 2011, 2012) and two German Cups (2010, 2011).
Hines played for Bamberg in the 2010-11 season, too, getting the German double, domestic league and cup. In fact, that season was his ticket to Olympiacos in the summer of 2011. Then, his career really took off!
Hines was a key player in the Reds’ back-to-back EuroLeague titles in 2012, the club’s first in 15 years, and in 2013, the last repeat title in the competition and one of only two in the last 25 years! He also won the Greek League with Olympiacos in 2012. Hines now has three European titles under his belt (the last one with CSKA in 2016), making him and former great Mike Batiste the only Americans this century with that many!
Hackett won the Greek League with Olympiacos in 2016, while Strelnieks celebrated three German League titles with Bamberg (2015, 2016, 2017), as well as the German Cup in 2017. He then followed the same route as Hines, from Freak City to Piraeus, aspiring to have the same triumphant course as the American center!
Rivals on the court, “brothers” in life!
The connection between the two clubs is completed by the close friendship between Vassilis Spanoulis and Nikos Zisis! The two Greek players, both of whom have been EuroLeague champions, have been buddies since the late 1990s. For 20 years now, they have been essentially like family, so close that in 2010, Spanoulis became best man at Zisis’ wedding!
They’ve never been teammates at the club level, but in summers they always vacation together with their families, and when one visits the other’s team for a game, they always find the time to catch up. A few hours later, epic battles and often personal matchups on the court take place between them!
Only one can win!
So, there are plenty of reasons to focus on the Bamberg vs. Olympiacos game on Thursday night. Will the Greek team win in Freak City for the first time in their history? Or will the Brose Arena remain the only impregnable fortress in the EuroLeague for them?
What kind of reception will there be for Strelnieks and old acquaintance Roberts as they return to a court where both did great things, won titles and became one with the fans? How will Hackett feel and how will he play against Olympiacos, know that when Ioannis Sfairopoulos called him to tell him he wouldn’t continue with the Reds, he broke into tears, as he revealed in an interview with Eurohoops?
Will it be Zisis or Spanoulis who will have an extra reason to tease their buddy after the game? All the answers will be given in the Brose Arena! The only thing that’s certain is that only one side can win!