Galis, Drazen and Raja

Surely Vassilis Toliopoulos, Roberto Galinat and every other would-be Aris top scorer cannot be confused with… Galis!!!

Against this background, the Serbian coach said today (October 25th, 9:00 p.m., Novasports Prime And LIVE from Sportish) Opponents of Aris, Slask WroclawOliver Vidin has no right to erase from the chest of collective memory of Polish basketball the legendary remark made by a colleague of his 34 years ago…

In the chronicle of the “Emperor’s” games with the Poles, the hands of the clock stop on December 6, 1989, when Wojciech Krajewski presented the celebrant of that day “Gangster” with a seemingly priceless gift …

The next day, in the group of 8 of the European Cup, Ares hosted Lech Poznan and the so-called Lech Poznan received the usual and inevitable question of that time all over the European basketball country…

“How do you want to deal with Galis?’

“We will say our prayers for Galis”

Krajewski swallowed, smiled and gave an epic answer…

“I’ve already told my players. We are currently making plans on how we will brand the other four Mars players. For Galis we will simply say our prayers»!

What are you saying now!

Apparently Krajewski was neither an atheist nor irreligious, but his prayers were not…

When Aris defeated the Polish champions 116-92 the next night, Galis scored a career-high 52 points!

The prayers didn’t even happen in the second round, on February 8, 1990, when Aris defeated Posen 103-78, with Galis being more economical and reducing his productivity.

This time he only scored 39 points!

In these two games, the eliminated “Xanthos” fielded Nikos Galis, Panagiotis Giannakis, Stoyan Vrankovics, Mike Jones, Vassilis Lipiridis, Michalis Romanidis, Manthos Katsoulis and Nikos Filippou.

The Lech Poznan squad was dominated by two emblematic figures of Polish basketball: Eugeniusz Kiewski and Jaroslav Jehorek, who scored a total of 87 points in both games.

The Polish punching bag and the escape of “Xantho”

In its first and only appearance in the elite of the Champions Cup, Lech Poznan, who qualified by defeating Strotel Kyiv in the qualifying phase, played the unwanted role of punching bag and suffered 14 defeats in as many games!

Aris finished fourth at 8-6, behind Barcelona 912-2), Jugoplastica Split (11-3) and Limoges 910-4, followed by Tracer Milano (7-7), Maccabi Tel Aviv (6-8) and Dutch Den Helder (2-12) and Lech Poznan (0-14).

Aris qualified for the third consecutive year for the Final 4, which took place in Zaragoza, where it was defeated by Barcelona 104-83 in the semifinals and Limoges 103-91 in the small final.

This season marked the (yellow) swansong of “Xanthos”, who shot towards Neo Faliro to take over the technical leadership of Olympiakos after the doldrums of the 1990/91 season.

Yellow ribbon for the opening

As a follow-up now…

Lech Poznań played in the European Cup until the 1993/94 season, but then had serious financial problems that led to them dissolving and disappearing from the map.

A year after his game against Lech Poznan, Aris found his current opponent on the way and in a historic moment for the Polish team.

The reason;

Against the famous Aris (since the Poles promoted the game), Hala Ludowa, later renamed Centennial Hall, was inaugurated, while Slask then moved to Orbita Hall.

The opening ribbon was yellow as the Thessalonians defeated the home team of Poland in an exciting game with a score of 75-74, while in Alexandrio they won confidently with 106-88 and qualified for the round of 16. They finished in the B team seventh place with a record of 3-11.

Raicevic’s basket and Drazen’s farewell

In general, Polish basketball evokes pleasant associations with Aris, who won the FIBA ​​​​Europe Champions Cup in the 2002/03 season by defeating Procom Trefl Sopot 84:83 in the Final Four in Alexandria …

And how; With Miroslav Rajcevic’s buzzer beater!

After many years, Aris returns to Wroclaw, where Drazen Petrovic presented his own “swan song” thirty years and four and a half months ago…

This city also saw a Greek team draw against the same opponent, which even led to an epic tirade…

So the calendar showed March 10, 1998, when Panathinaikos (coach of Lefteris Subotic) met Slask in the quarterfinals of the Saporta Cup in the “Hala Ludova” in Wroclaw, with whom they had defeated a week earlier in the OAKA 82-58.

“I Raja don’t lose from something called Slask”!

Eight seconds before the end of the rematch, a shot from Latvia’s Raymundas Miglinieks gave the Poles a 61-59 lead, but there was still enough time for Dino Raja to decide the game and avert defeat.

The Croatian superstar scored almost half of the team’s points (29/61), while this rare draw officially sealed Panathinaikos’ qualification for the semi-finals of the competition, where they were eliminated by Stefanel Milano.

As soon as the game was over, someone asked Raja why he was so angry to pick up the ball after Migliniecs’ shot and chase like a madman to equalize…

Then Dino, in his usual matter-of-fact style, turned around and gave a legendary answer, which I’m republishing exactly as it was worded…

“Why m@@@a, I o RajaI can’t bear to lose to… something they call that Slask»!