It hasn’t been a good week since I wrote that I hoped, wished and prayed I didn’t have to write another obituary and the death knell rang again…

Gone is Theophilos, whom Syrigos had baptized Theotrelo!

Mitroudis had nothing to do with the other managers who spent all those years in basketball: I don’t mean that he was better, but he was definitely special.

A case sui generis, a class of its own!

We met almost forty years ago when he invaded Mars like a bull in a glass shop and Greek basketball, then when he was removed from the top we lost our way and in the last few years we are again came very close, and then I realized again how much … he carried!

And crazy and boy

After all, he said so himself, he admitted that science had its hands up with his attitude, but the timeless question/dilemma does not go unanswered.

What was Mitroudis? crazy or boy? Both together!

Having adopted both, he embraced his madness with the young man and at the same time he already introduced himself as a modern day anarchist!

Stylish with the trendy neckerchief that wraps around your neck like a scarf!

“I was and am an anarchist” he kept telling me.”Anarchist of neither the left nor the right, anarchist of the…centre, maybe the only one in the world“!

It’s been almost four years since he called me to confide in me his secret that I shared with Dimitris Karydas, Pavlos Korkidis and Giannis Giannakis…

He sent us a copy of the book that has just been published which was his own testimony and personal testimony (as a protagonist, of course) in the case of basketball empire Mars.

“You will not cut anything”

He had commissioned Dimitris Dragogias to write it and sent a copy to some people he trusted to make their comments, on one condition…

“You will not cut anything”!

Shall we cut?

My God, forgive me, who could ever cut anything out of his raging and uninhibited speech?

Such an attempt would be in vain, after all I was both passionate and scholarly!

I am writing this because in 1994, when he was invited to a Saturday broadcast on ERT, I had to ask the commissioner and umpires of the ensuing A1 game to delay the Yambol by ten minutes!

He had run away, he was talking non-stop and he didn’t want to put an end to it, but I didn’t dare to (interrupt) him either!

It was an honor for me to be on the podium at the presentation of the book “THE EMPIRE: The Rise and Fall of the Back of the Moon”, which turned into a basketball game and reserved, among other things, a touching human moment!

The apology to Giannakis and the chase with Gali

That night of October 2, 2019 in the “Ianos” bookshop, when Mitroudis met Panagiotis Giannakis, he cried and apologized to him after 27 years!

“I’m sorry my boy for disturbing you. Forgiveness! The legend went (SS: Galis) and went to Athens to get the billions and I kept you on Mars to do what? To save an empire that had already died!

Two years earlier (May 25, 2016) at the opening ceremony of the professional basketball department in the XANTH Museum, there was an unexpected shock: Then Mitroudis met Nikos Galis and the snapshot with their cross kiss is part of the story and the collection Memory of Greek Basketball !

They had kissed again in May 1992 when they dissolved their bags…

“We kissed and he leftsaid Mitroudis afterwards, who would go down in history with the label of the evil dragon that ate Gali!

He was never forgiven for that: the 1992-93 season started with a record of 16-1, Aris trampled PAOK 88-56 and the people at “Pale” were demanding Mitroudis’ head on the table!

On the day that the book “Ianos” was delivered (and in the midst of a general strike), Mitroudis had not placed an order: on June 2, 829 AD, the son of Michael of Travlos, who was called Michael the Great , ascended the Byzantine throne, Theophilus!

The Refuge of the Soul and the marbled king

In his prologue to the book, Mitroudis states that the book was written to satisfy his personal needs, shut the doors of misinformation, make his own truths public, and make it a sanctuary for his soul.

He had already chosen to ordain under the protection of Skotina in Pieria, so he was used to these personal imprisonments in search of peace and (self) purification.

He was looking for something more with this book and he had confided in me from the first moment: he wanted to revive the marbled king!

All he writes in the book is his own testimony and his own—after all, the two words rhyme—sin!

(born November 23, 1953 in Thessaloniki) An explosive cocktail of payments from the city and Trebizond from Pontus, Mitroudis was many things together: I dare write (that he was) many people together!

“let me go and if i move”

Factor in the truest sense of the word: He brought forth ideas, sometimes extreme, groundbreaking, incompatible with the times, the facts and the circumstances.

As Giannis Giannakis said when presenting the book: “Mitroudis was the doer, the doer, an exponent of his Archimedean principle.“.

Give me a place to stand and I’ll move the earth even more!

If Galis and Giannakis didn’t exist, Mitroudis was able to create them…

If in his madness along with Steve Giatzoglou he didn’t find Tarpley, he would also create a Roy and christen his daughter and give her the name Harmony again!

Four-legged and great smoothie, without a doubt.

Caesar or nothing!

Throughout his career in basketball and life, Miroudis has expressed a Latin aphoristic proverb: Aut Caesar, aut nihil.

Ή Caesar or nothing!

Many charged Mitroudis: he raised the cross of martyrdom not only for his own mistakes, but also for those of others.

The Journey and the Stupidity of Prison

He never stumbled, yet he never lowered his head, even when he was imprisoned (for other reasons) in Diavata Prison for 75 days and nights from September to November: where “there is great respect in people’s lives, moral laws apply, sobriety prevails, and lying and lying are crimes.” he told me on October 8, 2019 on Cosmote TV’s Pick N’ Rol show.

Do you know what Theofilos called his captivity? “A trip to an exotic place that I needed at the end of my life to get smarter“!

Mitroudis also went to other places. As a student at ASOEE, he spent the night at “Panorama” on Acharnon Street listening to Panos Gavalas and Ria Kourti.

On November 17, ’73 he was at the polytechnic.

He later turned professional, inherited the BMW dealership from his father, and later expanded his business fleet to include Renault, Skoda, Blaupunkt, “Persian” carpets and so on.

I didn’t eat a fortune, I ate two

In 2004 he started building houses for the Roma, founded a settlement of 46 houses in Skotina and never stopped making fun of himself…

“I’ve spent a lot of money in my life. They say I ate a fortune. That’s a big mistake. I ate two fortunes: one with the money I got from my family and a second with what I earned myself“!

In the later years of his life, Mitroudis had no money but declared himself rich in feelings and experiences.

He even poked fun at the health issues that plagued him, saying: “My doctor has forbidden me to eat bitola a larus, stroganoff fillets and Russian salad because he fears it will shake my political beliefs.“!

In this last virage, Threofilos gave up tennis and skiing and played backgammon and biriba.

“I love women very much, especially the ones that have passed through my life, so now I don’t have any“he explained it.”In 1976 I married Nikola and we had three daughters, Faye, Tonia and Nadia. They are all stars and dolls. My wife and I divorced in 1988 and I’ve loved her more ever since“!

“I just didn’t do two things”

After all, what did Mitroudis do in his life? He himself took the time to respond to the publication of the book.

“I had a good time and I have no complaints. I have lived everything. I’ve done everything the human mind can imagine. Anything but being gay! This denial was my choice, if I was wrong we’ll never know. Oh yeah, I didn’t do anything else either, I committed suicide and that happened because I have a strong character“.

“I’m afraid of fools, not of death”

And so it ended in a prophetic test: “At the end of the journey, my steps took me down Mount Olympus to write this book. I knew this would happen. The time crew has arrived. The time has come alone. I was denied nothing. I would sometimes wake up at dawn just to go fishing. I miss nothing and fear only fools, not death. Death takes you to the world of immortals“.

Goodwill Theophilus in the world of immortals!