Elenit, the 20/20 recordings and the engagement to ‘Xanthos’

In the 1985-86 season, the First National basketball championship was normally and by law a monopoly!

With Aris – who will receive Olympiakos (5:00 p.m., ERT3 and LIVE from Sportish) today (7.2.) – established his empire, the competition for the scepter slipped more and more, so that it is no longer a question of which team it is will win the title, but it will tickle his feet..

A product of the long unbeaten streak that ended 80-0, Aris was crowned champion with 26 wins in an equal number of games, surpassing 100 points in 16 of them while surpassing 120 in six, with a record of 153 against the Middle East.

The “Showtime” held up well and from one point the torment was limited to the records, to the various achievements and sometimes to scenes and dialogues that resembled the salt and pepper of the story…

On March 8, 1986, as part of the 20th game, Olympiacos welcomed Aris at the Piraeus Indoor Stadium in Lefka, where eight years earlier (with the break ordered by George Proestos) the title, a story highly rated in scope, to which I’ll get into later…

The Complex Defense and the Unknown Lipiridis

Piraeus led 35-26 in the 13th minute thanks to complex defence, three in a zone and two man against man (with Tzimis Maniatis against Nikos Galis and Giannis Paragios against Panagiotis Giannakis) but couldn’t take it after that. In the second half, the (until then unlucky) Galis took the lead and Giannis Ioannidis found an (unexpected and largely unknown) solution in the person of Vassilis Lipiridis.

At the beginning of the second half, the score was still fluid and when Nikos Filippou was hit with the fourth foul, “Xanthos” called from the bench to Edessa, who stormed forward, who had his first season at the age of 19 and, by the way, hadn’t had it yet Swallowed his coach’s punch for the lost (by Kevin Maggie) rebound that cost Aris from Maccabi’s loss to “Yad Eliau”…

Hearing Ioannidis’ order, “Bilili” immediately stood up, threw away his uniform and entered the stadium like he was a kamikaze!

He played in the remaining 19 minutes and scored just two points but gave Aris the defensive spirit he needed and was instrumental in turning the derby into a walk as Olympiakos, in addition to waking up his opponents, also had to deal with Maniatis’ injury. , resulting in a score change from 57-62 to 66-79 within five minutes.

“Don’t Tell Me You’re Undefeated”

Eventually Thessaloniki overtook Lefka 102-88 and when a journalist asked Ioannidis about the possibility of a 26-0 he replied: “don’t call me invincible ’cause nobody made a contract with the victories»…

Nobody, except Mars back then!

The Mars mission for this game involved a face unknown to the public that would become one of the team’s symbols in the following years: Slobodan, known as Lefteris Subotic!

“Pixie” didn’t have the right to play yet, but he followed the team and I even remember that I interviewed him in the courtyard of the stadium and he made a great impression on me that he spoke Greek well!

But the most interesting (and prophetic) happened at the stadium …

The Broken Chair and the Prophecy of “Xanthos”

During the half-time break and while Ioannidis (constantly protesting to the referees) was going to the dressing room, he overheard some Olympiacos fans posting him because a chair was broken during the game (impersonating Bobby Knight)!

«Ioannidis be careful because we are Piraeus and we don’t raise such. You made the episode on purpose because you didn’t have time out and wanted to give direction to your players“Someone told him and Ioannidis, who… wanted to die for such controversies, got up and answered them:

«I’m also a Kardashian from the port»!

He then smiled at her and as he continued on his way, one of his fans exclaimed: “Blonde, you’re a guy and we like you. How can we bring you here together with our playful neighbor Giannakis?; »

Ioannidis smiled again and when he got lost in the hatch he said to them in his proverbial style: “In life, no one knows what can happen to him. Maybe you’ll see me here one day… »

Kipling’s “If”

He read a clogged letter (it turned out) because after five years, what was first discussed on the night of March 8, ’86, when the engagement rings were over: he took over as Olympiacos coach and put an end to the Stone Age , only the group of their own free will leaves “Papastratio” where the dialogue had taken place and moves to the Peace and Friendship Stadium …

Ioannidis stole the show at half-time, but the epilogue was written by Costas Anastasatos. As; At the end of the fight, instead of making any other comment, the “philosopher” recited a few verses from Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “If”!

“If you can be alone in joy but also in sorrow
and if the belief in your ego is extinguished by nothing,
e, my child, with all this you will be able to live life properly, you will be a great man and sovereign on earth “!!!

Regardless of the seasons, conditions and status of each team, the games between Olympiakos and Aris have plenty of salt and pepper, after all two such games were dreamed up into a title 43 years ago!

The first round match between Olympiakos and Aris was abandoned with a decision that was a “casus belli” by George Proestos in the 31st minute and the score at 54-58.

Proestus and Elenith

At that point, the referee and later coach of Thessaloniki (who led the youth national team to the throne of the Mundobasket in 1995) imposed a technical penalty on Olympiakos, the spectators got angry and one of them detached a piece of Elenite from the roof and threw it on the ground …

Proestos immediately went to the dressing room and never returned to the field…

The next day, as part of the third game (since the teams then worked double shifts on the weekends), Aris, who had been defeated 79-75 in the inaugural championship at the Tomb of the Indians by Panathinaikos, suffered his second loss to Sporting with 74:72 in the stadium of Patissia, which was full of – revengeful – Olympiacos fans.

Finally, the title was to be decided in the Aris – Olympiakos match, which took place in Alexandreio on February 12, 1979, where eight thousand spectators crowded, apart from the three thousand who were left out!

Meanwhile, Aris had defeated Panathinaikos at home 63-62 and if they beat Olympiakos they would secure the title they had aspired and craved since 1930!

The 49 years of anticipation and the 20/20 recordings

Defending the 1979 scepter, Olympiakos sold his Tomar very dearly, the match developed into a dramatic thriller and was decided in Aris’s favor with a score of 85-83 in the final seconds.

The Championship’s first goalscorer (with a 35.5 point average) Haris Papageorgiou had suffered from food poisoning, played sluggishly and was limited to half his usual fare (17p), allowing the wild and unstoppable Vangelis to win the game.

The “Tiger” scored 30 points, twenty of them with 20/20 shots, a product of the repeated fouls made to stop Paul Melini, Nikos Sismanidis, Giannis Garonis and George Barlas!

For Aris, Stavros Holopoulos (12) also had a double-digit score, while Olympiacos’ top scorers were Steve Giatzoglou on 17 points and Paul Melini on 16.

“Like I was in an empty stadium”

Thirty years later, Alexandris had commented on his monumental accuracy from the foul line…

«I thought of something Achilles Aslanidis, who was then playing for PAOK, said to me one day in a café in Thessaloniki: “Me, Kardashian, when I take a penalty, I don’t look anywhere. “I imagine I’m alone in an empty field and I’m shooting.” Well, that’s what I did that night: I went to the foul line and took shots like I was in an empty field»!

The Arians, on the orders of Ioannidis, had kept secret the health problem of Papageorgiou, who scored the next day and raged in the game against Sporting (104-76), scoring 60 points!

A month later, on March 11-12, Aris defeated AEK 91-89 and Ionikos Nikaia 86-83 at home and that same evening, then-EEC President Zacharias Alexandrou presented the champion’s trophy to team leader Vangelis Alexandri.

The argument for Galis and the enchanted Fasoulas

The February 12, 1979 fight became historic for many reasons:

* Aris was crowned champion for the first time in 49 years

* The metropolis of Greek basketball, Thessaloniki, fulfilled a dislike that had haunted her for twenty years in a row: from the championship that PAOK had won in 1959!

* Giannis Ioannidis, 34, who retired from active duty in the summer of 1978 and took over the technical lead with… the Order of Anestis Petalidis, became the youngest coach to win the title of A’Ethniki

* This season was the beginning of the end for the great Olympiacos team that had to wait 14 years to regain the scepter, with then executioner “Xanthos”!

* Winning the title was the late George Tsiligaridis’ big argument in allaying concerns from Nikos Galis’ parents when he visited them at their home in New Jersey after four months. «Your son will play in the team that won the championship»!

* Coincidentally present at this race as a spectator on the podium was a 16 year old very tall (2.09 m) young man who was charmed by George Kastrinakis that evening and for this reason wore the number 13 jersey.

Orestis Angelidis had met him one day on a bus and with a lot of persuasion he got involved in basketball and enrolled in PAOK.

What was it called?

Panagiotis Fasoulas!