Joke fun (although such cases are no jokes) Panathinaikos runs those phases with fouls…

With the fouls and especially with the non-fouls!

Those non-fouls cost him two losses in seven and a half months and what Dimitris Priftis suffered yesterday in Polis was also bathed by Odent Katas in Lavrio on June 5 last year…

Then, twelve seconds before the end of the second final of the playoffs and at 78-81 the Greens committed no foul and let Tyson Carter shoot, equalizing and going into overtime and losing.

In this case, the current Zenit St. Petersburg player penalized the choice of katas that actually asked his players to play the perfect defense and not succumb to the temptation of fouls…

My deep knowledge if I had been the first to say a proverb…

Same again yesterday, but with one difference: in Lavrio, Panathinaikos was three points ahead, while against Efes, after Okaro White’s miss and with 14 seconds left to the last horn, the difference was two. .

Foul or not to foul

In cases like this, a point really makes a difference, because an unwritten rule referring to the falsified Shakespearean dilemma that says “to foul or not to foul” says that at +3 you foul unless you’re Greg Popovic!

At +2 you do the duck and whatever rains, let it down!

The day after the second final of last year’s Stoiximan Basket League, I had been diligently digging into this case, which I’ve been immersed in for years, by the way…

But then I was wrong, because I wrote that Katas asked for a foul, but was not heard …

I was wrong and I’m late in correcting my mistake today, because afterwards I’ve confirmed that the Israeli coach really explicitly and categorically preferred clear defence…

After the end of yesterday’s game, Costas Charalambidis, who had seen the same work alongside Katas last year, revealed in his interview with NOVA (one of the Priftis collaborators) the real dimension of the case, which oscillates between right and wrong. . .

Where’s Dunston, huh?

“We had chosen either the foul on Dunston or the defense. The American didn’t come in and we decided to take a chance, but we didn’t succeed“.

All options and all trainers are of course judged on the result, so there’s no hard and fast rule here, aside from the boys being slaughtered on the altar of foul or non-foul!

As much as the dilemma of decision is involved, so much is at stake in what will prove to be the coach who makes it…

The guy or… guy!

Zots Public Consultation

Here is a classic example already affecting Panathinaikos…

On May 3, 2009, in the final of the Euroleague Final 4 in the 02 Arena in Berlin, a project very similar to yesterday was played …

So Okaro White missed the first shot yesterday and scored only the second after he … fouled his nest since November 18 last year in Munich (Bayern – Panathinaikos 81-78) in 46 seconds and with a score of 74-76 had Both she threw in the trash.

In the 2009 final, Saronas Jasikevitsous had one of the two shots that “wrote” 73-71 in favor of Panathinaikos… Ettore Messina called a time-out on the cover to give the instructions for the final attack…

Back then, Zeljko Obradovic did not make the decision alone, not even in consultation with Dimitris Itoudis, but (as Mike Batiste testifies in his autobiography) he raised the issue in a public consultation!

So he addressed the players, asked for their opinion in a kind of debate and the summary of the answers he received contributed to the defence, an opera and that’s it…

Obradovic didn’t continue this highly democratic process because he didn’t want to evade and not take responsibility, but for a reason that coaches need to know, respect and apply…

At this moment, it is the players who have the so-called feel, that is, the sense of what is happening on the field and how a defense or an attack should be played, especially when judging a title!

The defense of Santa Claus, the perpetrator and the victim

On the next click, and while Zots pulled Saras back (so the Russians wouldn’t mark him with a mismatch) and Stratos Perperoglou bet, Drew Nikolas squeezed into the arms of Ramounas Siskauskas…

The Lithuanian ex-Panathinaikos player scored the three, the ball didn’t hit him and everything else is history!

So yesterday Panathinaikos saw the same work from the other side: then he was the perpetrator, now he became the victim!

Vassilie Mitsic was reluctant to take the final shot because he was the game’s top scorer (along with compatriot Nemanja Nedovic), but up until that moment he had zero in the seven three-pointers…

So he saw Timbor Place in the corner and threw him the ball for a possible corner 3, but also due to the fact that he has 12/25 trebles this year he literally made the German!

Next to him at 45 degrees was Adrian Moerman, who was armed and how impossible it was to leave fate!

It was too late for Okaro White to pass him and everything (shouldn’t have happened but did) happened!

The Stretch Four with over 20 three-pointers

By the way, the French power forward, already declared a stretch four up to this moment, had 2/5 three points and finished the match with 3/6 …

But the roast is elsewhere: Moerman has hit 20 more threes (29/75) than twos (30/55) in 20 games this season and he would certainly toss his hat to run from 6.75, barring even the opportunity to to be declared heroes of the night.

If he lost it of course, a black snake that ate him!

Finally, as the song sung by George Dalaras puts it: “Everythingwe all wrote what they call destiny“: Whites Kismet wrote that he would become homme fatal and Moermans how he would suck the nectar…

The Priest’s Thought

Apparently Ataman guessed the logical thought of Priftis and – judging by the later testimony of Charalambides – whom he wisely withdrew Dunston and set Plais …

He was sure that Panathinaikos would try to commit a foul on the former player of Aris and Olympiakos and … our groom (since he is married to Anna Kavasila, daughter of Vangelis Kavasilas, who died his terrible 40 years ago Talent with tears in the rubble saw with shin and fork) and parked him on the bench…

Reasonable, very logical as Dunston has had 2/5 shots up to this point and a 68.9% percentage of the line (31/45) throughout the tournament.

0-15, Giannis and the beautiful defeats

It was Panathinaikos’ tenth game this year and their 15th consecutive away game after defeating Olympiakos on February 5, 2020…

A little later in Milwaukee Giannis Antetokounbo started talking about the bad victories and I wonder if the one Panathinaikos suffered at Polis is one of the nice defeats!

This is a big and certainly awkward conversation…

The pardoned Alketas Panagoulias had once said that far from destroying a hair, triumph is far from shattering, and this… black truth Panathinaikos had to learn hard on the skin…

When a team loses a game by a point in the last second, it’s all their own fault: a gift shot, a missed free kick, a tactical decision, a bad spin, a pass (from Plais to Moerman), a second and it doesn’t add up !

The one shot I’m referring to was a gift from Spanish referee Danny Jerethuelo with the technical penalty he exaggeratedly awarded Dimitris Priftis two minutes from time because, as he says, half of his shoe was stepped on the by the way. !

Merciful man!

The Line of Zarko, by Gali and his… Psarantonis

Here fits an attack by Psarantonis as he was driving on the Rethymno-Heraklion highway and was stopped by a traffic cop…

“Yaida, did you stop me, mate?” she asked him amazed…

“Sorry, Antonis, but you have crossed the dividing line,” answered the… instrument.

“I tricked them, I’m down, but I didn’t extrude them at all,” the Anogia lyre player replied in surprise.

To dissolve in Cretan means to melt, to crush! And Priftis stepped to the sidelines, but he didn’t stretch it at all!

Either way, the lines are lethal, and Zarko Paspali knows that better than anyone from this vicious memory of her Olympiacos playoff pressing with Limoges at Beaublanc in 1993.

He also knows, but fortunately didn’t pay, because of referee Nikos Galis’ negligence when he squeezed him before the pass to Fanis Christodoulou to squeeze the three-pointer with which the National threw the Soviets to the canvas in the semifinals of the 1989 Eurobasket in Z !

The “yes, but” and Pitino’s “Beast”

So Panathinaikos didn’t survive yesterday’s thriller, despite what this means less in terms of climbing the rankings or increasing their chances of getting the (long-lost) qualification, but in terms of psychological advancement, strengthening prestige, improving the working atmosphere and in concreting to build momentum.

However, there are also elements…of winning yesterday’s 15th loss in 19 games: his competitiveness against the European champions, the indomitable character he displayed throughout the game, his dominance in rebounds (with the spearheads of Evans, White and Sand Ross), his impressive improvement in three-pointers (12/28) and – at an individual level – the superb, possibly unexpected yet very promising presence of Vassilis Kavvadas, called up from the reserves to score…Papagianni !

Did Rick Pitino wrongly call him “Beast”?

PS: At the end of the night it all went wrong and it remains to be seen if the dregs of yesterday’s bitter Turkish coffee can leave a little aroma in the cup…