The Great Escape of the Twelve and the feeling that Panathinaikos had forgotten ACTOR

“It was the biggest heist of the season“. With these words Marius Grigonis described Panathinaikos AKTOR’s victory in the Salle Gaston Medecin. A victory that he had in his own hands in stoppage time. Monaco was objectively better for long stretches of the game.

So what; In the end, only the result counts. This was the case in Belgrade three weeks ago, when Ergin Ataman’s players did everything perfectly before doing everything wrong and losing their own game in extra time.

The most important thing for Panathinaikos AKTOR is not the result. But the way it came about. With proof of personality.

Keep pushing

For a team to win games like this (where nothing works), it needs character. At least someone should appear to pull the cart out of the mud and lead it to safer paths. So that was Kendrick Nunn. At the end of the third period he was the worst player on the court considering he had shot 0/6.

Something that didn’t affect him at all, as was evident from the way he entered the last ten minutes. It was this logic of “moving on” that changed the facts. He was more aggressive than before, went into personal phases (he made great saves in the middle of the action) and gave Panathinaikos AKTOR the lifeline they were looking for against a region that seemed to have lost them and was not as mentally strong.

The justification of the unjust

And then two big phases came from the rest of the region. Kostas Sloukas, who beat Matias Lessor’s screen and shot into the basket at 55”, and Marius Grigonis, who signed the biggest robbery of the season, as he explained.

For the 28-year-old guard, this shot is personal redemption. The redress of the player who suffered the most injustice last year when the team’s decline took him down, on a point that was hotly disputed. Obviously, in a situation where nothing worked, even he would seem inadequate.

The evening of December 20th is the answer to that!

Create the opportunity

Somehow, the Panathinaikos ACTOR created a great opportunity for himself: with his psychology at its peak, he went to the Mediolanum Forum to “clean up” Armani Milan. To make it 2/2 in the devil’s week away against Greece and give the world another reason to sell out Red Star in a week, in the last game of 2023.

Nothing else, but after meeting Yannis Sfairopoulos’ team, another devil’s week follows, in which he will spend four days in Spain (against Baskonia and Valencia).

The memory of the feeling

The victory in the Salle Gaston Medecin brings Panathinaikos AKTOR closer to the top six, closer to the leading teams. This is about the rating effect of the night. Because there is also the psychological side, which counts more in this case.

Simply because the entire organization needed this victory. After two years of wear and tear, after a two-year period that was the worst in the club’s modern history.

The people of Panathinaikos AKTOR and the friends of the team needed a victory like this, in this way, against such an opponent, more than anything. Not to believe it (they had already done so since the summer), but to relive that feeling that they had forgotten what it was like.