Come again with Dijon. Here sits my… brawler and every time she goes up against a Greek team I feel like I have to endure the torture of the drop!

I also feel like the forgiven Nikos Kourkoulos, when he played Angelos Kreuzi in the movie “Visibility Zero” he sat on a chair and fussed: “No more money”!

Likewise, I shout “No more mustard”!

As you know, in addition to its famous wines, Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, is also famous for its mustard…

We felt how hot it was 23 years ago when the promising and ambitious endeavor of the national team in the 31st EuroBasket ended in an unexpected and short-lived fiasco the likes of which we have never seen before and I hope it will not happen us again in eternity!

So this (today’s) point of struggle between PAOK and the so-called comes again to wake up those unpleasant and traumatic experiences that we lived in June 1999 …

AEK, PAOK and Lavrio

The bad thing is that in the successive games of the Basketball Champions League in recent years, these experiences are constantly waking up and the nightmare happens in OAKA (AEK), in Pylaia (PAOK) and in Neo Faliro (Lavrio). …

I’m writing this because it happened that in the last four years Dijon first against AEK, then against PAOK (who suffered two losses in the 2019-20 season with 81-76 and 84-77 and will score again this year) and then Lavrio, apart from making our so-called goats a scapegoat in October 2020…

At that point, the two-time French Cup winners and 2020-21 Championship finalists had qualified for the BCL Final 8 and even finished third, behind winner San Pablo Burgos (whom they lost to in the semifinals) and finalists AEK.

The Greek “Titanic”

So what happened that damn June 1999 in Dijon?

Quite simply, we shot our own version of “Titanic” a year after James Cameron!!!

And – to put it on another basis – we made the newspaper Basket Hebdo hate us because the next day they commented on our thunderous blockade with the brilliant caption “Hellas, cent fois hélas”, which was in the language by Victor Hugo means “Greece, a hundredfold woe”!

Oh, he won’t say anything!

For the Greek team, which spent eight years oscillating between fourth and fifth place in the major competitions, the trip to Dijon became a short spray, wipe, done process!

It was indeed a disaster that happened in three nights and resulted in three defeats that took the national team to last place in the rankings of the 16 teams, expulsion from the 2000 Olympic tournament and a period of introversion!

A high five out

To tell the crook the truth, someone… a cuckold must have given us a hefty feeding bowl back then, because there is no other way to explain so much collected Gadem…

On the way to Dijon, the national team lost a total of five, regular and excellent, to injuries: Sioutis, Liadelis, Albertis, Oikonomou and Renzias!

Yes, by God, a full five was drawn (with ace, two, three, four, five), except that “Fraggi” was knocked out on the eve of the jamball and his absence ruined the plans of Kostas Petropoulos, who had four months earlier followed by Panagiotis Giannakis and (technical advisor) Giannis Ioannidis.

Der Bankwitz, Albertis and Jordan

The technical leadership had based almost all of their offensive plans on the Panathinaikos captain, causing the side to go bankrupt and fail miserably. As one member of the team told me at the time, “When Albertis came out, we all suddenly wanted to play Jordan!”

On top of that, the national team also fell into the case of a diarchy in their technical leadership, which was a déjà vu in the times of Phaidos Matthaios and Kostas Mourouzis.

From the first moment the confusion of roles and responsibilities was evident, because “Blonde” was in the stands, but he had an obvious influence on what was happening, with the result that on the one hand the players suffered…tail blocking (which of course was a was a foreign word) and on the other hand as a mission to become a joke of the organization!

At the height of this hilarious tragedy, Czech coach Zdenel Hummel also worked hard on us, commenting: “We had an easy game because half the players were listening to a coach on the bench and the other half were watching coaches on the platform”!

As if the interests of the diarchy weren’t enough, for the first time the national team also spread a very strange and neo-rich atmosphere, the tone of which was set by various supporters tangled at the feet of the players…

Nowitzki can wait…

With these and with those, in addition to bad luck and confusion in the technical leadership, the national team already fell to the side of Vladimir Bogojevic in the premiere against Germany, in the second game against the Czech Republic to Ljubos Barton and also where we lost with them, we also got sacks from the gang of Arvindas Sabonis (opposite Iakovos Tsakalides) and the disaster was over!

In Dijon, 21-year-old Dirk Nowitzki made his international debut after his first season in the NBA.

On the hill exposed to the suspension, the German Mavericks forward averaged 8.2 points and 3.4 rebounds in the year, but the Americans mocked him and called him Irk Nowtzki: they deliberately removed the initial D from his name, which in basketball jargon is short for defense, meaning it is a string in defense.

Bogojevic’s knife

However, our executioner in Dijon was not Nowitzki, unfortunately that would happen after two years in Antalya. The one who killed us in cold blood was Serbian striker Vladimir Bogojevic, who “nailed” us in the first game (58-59) with a three-point knife, with which the Germans came back from 56-48!

Even though 23 years have passed since then, I will never forget my reaction in the press box at Dijon Stadium when the game against Lithuania ended, and I still feel a little bit!

“Thank you God”!

While around me most of the Patatrak people were stunned, some cursing and others running to pack their bags, my humility overwhelmed me!

Before I started writing my text, I stood up, put my hands in a prayer position, looked up, thanked God out loud for all the joys and great emotions He had given me to live in this group, made my cross and then sat down quietly in my chair and I started writing the text memorial!

At the same time, in the national team dressing room, the Voumara grasped the extent of the shock…

Papanikolaou’s “Imia” and the… snoring of Sigala!

The only one who found the courage to say a few words and make fun of himself was Dimitris Papanikolaou…

“Now all we have to do is hang our tails on the branches and hide in… Imia,” commented the team’s top scorer (with an average of 15.7 points), while the scaffolding was already being put in place in Greece.

One newspaper slammed Ioannidis with the headline “Fire the… charlatan immediately”, while Giorgos Sigalas thrashed about his return to Athens anyway, already counting on the team’s recovery…

“Now get as much bile out as you want and spit on us, because you won’t get a chance like that in the future”!