By Nikos Varlas/ varlas@eurohoops.net
Eurohoops will select 3 players from each team in the Final Four whose performance we consider crucial regarding how their teams will fare in Madrid and will present them in 12 different parts. One by one they will “parade” through and we will focus on their role and the reasons they are important.
Why he’s a catalyst
In the summer it would have been hard to predict that we would be including him amongst Olympiacos’s key players ahead of the final four. But he who dares, wins! Othello arrived as a back up solution in the rotation of the ‘5’ position. The truth is that not only did he manage to get to the point where he is considered equal to Bryant Dunston, but probably even more important. For a number of reasons. The first? He responds very well to his defensive duties. The second, he improves all the time in offense.
Not only does he finish plays after pick and rolls, but he adds to his repertoire moves that help him create his own plays and finish them. It’s rare that you see a bigman demonstrating such marked improvement in the technical part, within a season. The word, however, that characterizes his first season with Olympiacos, is one: durability. His numbers and his real image on the court are impressively similar and consistent during the regular season, the Top 16, the series against Barcelona! Very important…
His role
In 27 games (he hasn’t missed one) he counts 8.4 points with 5 rebounds and 62.2% in two-point field goals. What cannot be reflected in statistics is his effectiveness in defense, especially in Hedge Out defenses, which are his specialty. He performs amazingly well in this area.
He closes in very powerfully on the opponent guard, avoids fouls and returns quickly to the position he has to be in right afterwards in the defensive rotation, helping Olympiacos considerably to tamper with the opponent’s effectiveness in offensive plays. This is exactly what Othello Hunter will have to do initially against CSKA and his performance in this particular area will decide to a large extent the total defensive goals of his team.
In offense 8-10 points (after set-ups by Spanoulis, Sloukas, Mantzaris and finishes in pick and rolls, or after 2-3 of his own plays) is all that is needed and is expected by coach Sfairopoulos from the American.
His wish
Here, things are simple. It’s about a player who, in the last five years, has wondered through Greece, Italy, Ukraine, Spain, China, and as he recently said in an interview in the Euroleague: “Several times in my career I have come second. I want at last to taste how it’s like to be first, at the top, to win titles.” Othello Hunter, at 29 years of age, has the chance to touch the Holy Grail of European basketball and to live out in the most emphatic way his “basketball wish.”