Post#199 » by Mirotic12 » Tue Aug 6, 2024 1:50 pm
The Greek NT's current EuroLeague players are all role players in their clubs, as UcanUwill said. They are championship caliber role players, guys that play key support roles for big clubs that can win championships, but they are all role players and none of them has been a top 3 option on offense ever in their careers. They are defensive specialists like Walkup, glue guys like Papanikolaou, veteran presence floor generals like Calathes, classic big man role in 3 man center rotation like Papagiannis, and so forth. And as UcanUwill also said, guys like Calathes and Walkup that can't shoot, are surrounded by very good shooters in their EuroLeague club teams. Neither of them has ever been able to shoot or score in EuroLeague, and just filled that specific niche role.
The main reason why Greece's national teams are often built like this over the last 15 years, is because of the Olympiacos and Panathinaikos EuroLeague club rivalry. Greece had lead offensive players in EuroLeague, players that were the first option on offense for EuroLeague teams, like Vassilis Spanoulis, Nikos Zisis, and Ioannis Bourousis, and that crazy club rivalry forced them out of the national team.
The problem started when Panagiotis Giannakis, who was Greece's head coach and had beaten Team USA A and Coach K, took the job as the head coach of Olympiacos in EuroLeague. He had won a EuroLeague championship as a player with Panathinaikos, and some of the club's fans in social media went crazy and complained so much that the national team was being coached by a "traitor". Giannakis was removed as the national team's head coach. And from then on, it was said that there would be no acceptance of any coach in the national team that was "Olympiacos" or "Panathinaikos", and not just currently coaching them, but seen as having any connection to them at all. So if that meant not using any of Greece's say 5-10 best coaches or whatever, so be it.
The next dominos were when Theo Papaloukas, who had been a CSKA Moscow player, when he was with the national team, signed with Olympiacos, and then after that, Vassilis Spanoulis left Panathinaikos and moved to Olympiacos, and then all hell broke lose with Greek social media with claims about how they could not let "traitors" like Spanoulis and his "accomplices" like Papaloukas, on the national team. Papaloukas was supposedly told that he couldn't come back to the national team to play at the 2010 World Cup, and that was that, he was never able to play with the national team again.
Then there was the huge Greece versus Serbia brawl in one of the prep games for the 2010 World Cup. Which happened because of the Olympiacos and Panathinaikos rivalry. Milos Teodosic (Olympiacos) and Antonis Fotsis (Panathinaikos) had some kind of tiff or something during the Greek League finals, and they carried it over to that prep game, and that's why it started. After that big brawl, many of Greece's best players simply never wanted anything to do with the national team anymore, because of the toxic environment that had been created by the club rivalry and social media.
Dimitris Diamantidis, who was always a Panathinaikos player, when he was on the national team, suddenly never played with the national team again. He announced his retirement from the team, right at the peak of his career. He said he was too tired to play with the national team anymore during the summer. Maybe that it is true and is the real reason why he quit at the peak of his career. However, he quit the national team after many fans of his club team were flooding social media with statements that Panathinaikos and its best players should not lower themselves down to the level of playing in a national team that allowed "traitors" and their "accomplices". The social media was just riddled with posts about how Diamantidis shouldn't play in the national team anymore and how Panathinaikos shouldn't risk their best player getting injured to play with "traitors".
And from then on, Spanoulis, "the traitor against Panathinaikos", and his two best friends, Ioannis Bourousis and Nikos Zisis, because they were "friends of the traitor" and "accomplices", had to deal with other Greek stars like Papaloukas and Diamantidis not playing anymore, several of Greece's other best players, that all played with either Olympiacos or Panathinaikos, almost always "needing time off", or "needing rest", or suddenly being "hurt", or any other such excuse you could think of not to play.
All of which meant that Greece pretty much always missed like 5-10 of its best players at every tournament, had some horrible level coaches, that couldn't even get a job in EuroLeague, and had teams full of the support players that they did have, that were far worse of a supporting cast than what Giannis has now, that this forum complains about so much and derides so much. Giannis actually has more help and a better team around him now than Spanoulis, Zisis, and Bourousis did in that era.
This is all also how Calathes really got stuck in the national team for so long, because so many of Greece's best players, and all of their best guards (Spanoulis, Diamantidis, Papaloukas, Zisis) were out of the national team several years earlier than they should have been. Calathes loved playing in the national team tournaments, and so that is how he got stuck in the team for so long. And at some point, it seemed like the Greek federation just felt obligated to him, because of his commitment, even if he wasn't actually good enough to be on the national team.
During that time, Greek social media would attack and attack those three players, or "traitors" (Spanoulis, Zisis, Bourousis) with all kinds of stuff about their kids, their mothers, their wives, and anything else you could imagine, and even went after Kostas Kaimaoglou, who was just one of the down the line Greek players, that only really got to play in the national team because of all the other better players not playing because of the Olympiacos - Panathinaikos club rivalry. But even he was getting attacked in social media, because he, "once played with the traitor Spanoulis in a youth tournament". Players like Stratos Perperoglou also got attacked in social media because of the club rivalry, etc.
Zisis and Spanoulis quit the national team, during the peak of their careers, after their families were getting tons of attacks in social media. They quit the national team at the time Giannis was a young NBA all star. They quit early (like Papaloukas and Diamantidis before them), from social media attacks, after they had earlier said they would play in the national team until age 38-40.
If not for the Olympiacos - Panathinikos rivalry, they never would have had to quit the national team because of social media attacks. So Theo Papaloukas, Dimitris Diamantidis, Vassilis Spanoulis, and Nikos Zisis, players from Greece's 2005 EuroBasket gold medal team (beat Spain), and players from their 2006 World Cup silver medal team (beat Team USA A), were all out of the national team 5-10 years early, due to a club rivalry, and it killed Greece's golden generation probably about 10 years before it otherwise would have ended.
Greece's previous golden generation of Nick Galis, Panagiotis Giannakis, Fanis Christodoulou, Panos Fasoulas, and Nikos Filippou, never had to deal with such a thing. They got to play out their time, even though it only was good for two medals. But the best generation Greece ever had, which was Spanoulis, Zisis, Papaloukas, and Diamantidis - that generation got killed off several years before it should have. And it probably cost Greece numerous medals.
It's not remotely the same player issue that Slovenia currently has. Slovenia, for whatever reason, just stopped producing any really good players outside of Luka. Which is strange, because in the 2000s to early 2010s, Slovenia had a really nice pool of players with Jaka Lakovic, Matjaz Smodis, Rasho Nesterovic, Erazem Lorbek, the Dragic brothers, etc. That era Slovenia would easily be one of the most talented teams at this Olympics.
Slovenia just stopped producing good players all of a sudden. Greece's greatest ever generation of players, was basically forced to end way too early, due to a club team rivalry. It's two entirely different situations.
