Olympiacos back to the Final Four: Red apocalypse that took five years to materialize / News - Basketnews.com

Credit: Olympiacos BC/Aspasia Velonaki Credit Olympiacos BC/Aspasia Velonaki

Less than two hours before Game 5 between Olympiacos Piraeus and AS Monaco tipped off, French newspaper L'Equipe broke the news again, heralding Kevin Durant's arrival at the Peace and Friendship Stadium.

Player of the Game EFF 24 Shaquielle McKissic Points 18 Accuracy 6-7 Rebounds 2 Assists 2

The NBA superstar and three-time Olympic gold medalist with Team USA had visited the Gaston Medecin for Game 4, and this time he was reportedly expected to sit next to Vassilis Spanoulis. It turned out he didn't.

Of course, Olympiacos fans couldn't care less. The main core of their die-hard fans was already on their seats - or, maybe, over their seats- way before Monaco made their way to the installation's parking area.

For the first time in the current season, several stadium parts were covered in red and white more than 90 minutes prior to tip-off.

Certainly, Game 1 was also sold-out. But this time was different. Fans of Olympiacos were impatiently waiting for their team to make a EuroLeague Final Four comeback. It had been five years of broken dreams.

First, back in 2018, Zalgiris Kaunas made the best out of the Reds' bad shape and injury issues, snatching a place in Belgrade (what a coincidence!). Then, in 2019, the team coached by David Blatt collapsed in the last two months of the season, losing to almost everyone.

That year signaled the official start and culmination of what the Olympiacos organization calls "until the end", which stands for an adamant stance against the Greek Basketball Federation - especially how the governing authority appointed referees to their games. Olympiacos suddenly turned into a more introverted club.

Not only did players' media appearances become few and far between, but the club's presidents and owners, Panagiotis and Giorgos Angelopoulos, seemed to avoid exposure at a time when an explanation for what was happening in the team was needed.

3-pointers this season

36%9,2Points made:9,2Accuracy:35,6%Place in standings:5Record max:18Record min:4Most made 3FGs:Tyler DorseyTeamEuroLeagueStatisticsSchedule

Olympiacos started to crumble in the only competition they took part in, which was the EuroLeague, staying away from the playoffs for three straight seasons. That's really a lot for a club that had made each and every TOP 8 since 2006.

At first, the Reds' absence from the Greek League was welcomed as a kind of mixed blessing. It would deprive players of game shape, but it could also help them rest and recover in order to focus on their next EuroLeague game. Alas, the plan didn't work at all. Regardless of who was coaching and how big or small the budget was, Olympiacos could never find consistency and turn into a serious contender.

The return of coach Giorgos Bartzokas was an attempt to get the team's identity back. Bartzokas had resigned in October 2014, following an away loss to Panathinaikos in the Greek Cup.

After that game, fans circled him in the team's parking lot, essentially forcing him to hand in his resignation.

Credit Photo by Angelos Tzortzinis / AFP

However, this time was different. While Olympiacos struggled to field a competitive squad and Bartzokas found Kostas Sloukas as the ideal successor to Vassilis Spanoulis, Panathinaikos kept sliding backward on all fronts.

In September 2021, when the elections of the Greek Federation brought Vangelis Liolios to the presidency, Olympiacos knew it was time for them to return. The Angelopoulos brothers knew it as well.

The season started with the club keeping a low profile, no matter how commonplace the phrase "looking one game at a time" has become. The initial plan was for the team to take at least one step forward compared to the 2020-21 season.

This time, Bartzokas had more freedom in his hands. Apart from discarding any player that had underperformed in the previous campaign (Octavius Ellis, Aaron Harrison), the 56-year-old tactician saw the market garner him two "gifts" in the form of Tyler Dorsey and Moustapha Fall.

However, the player whose basketball qualities are rare to find is Thomas Walkup. The Texan guard was the man who forced Mike James to bad decisions in Game 1, hustled on defense, dunked the ball, and took more shots than perhaps his own coach would have imagined, whilst largely changing the fate of Game 5 with his third-quarter plays.

The exclusion of Russian teams did little to hinder or push Olympiacos any higher or deeper than they already were in the standings.

One can safely assume that putting three solid playoff contenders (CSKA Moscow, Zenit Saint Petersburg, UNICS Kazan) out of contention facilitated the work of all the other teams, even of those that eventually didn't make the cut. But regardless of whether the Russians were still on, Olympiacos did an amazing job in protecting their home court this season (with three notable exceptions, none of which really mattered in the end).

Credit Olympiacos BC

In any case, the three games against CSKA, Zenit, and UNICS that Olympiacos eventually neer hosted could have brought some extra income to the club, despite the two playoff sell-outs.

The three-time EuroLeague champs were affected by the Greek government's decision to limit the allowed capacity in indoor arenas, which came up to only 1.000 after the Omicron variant took the country by storm in late December. Olympiacos saw all of their team members, including those in managerial positions, contract COVID and stay at home for days or even weeks.

The team that finished the first round with an impressive 12-5 balance suffered four straight losses in three weeks. The playoffs, which seemed to be almost a foregone conclusion, came close to becoming another lost cause, exactly as it happened in 2019.

The win in Vitoria was a silver lining, and the two consecutive home games against Anadolu Efes and Armani Milan helped to restore Olympiacos to their former position.

From that point on, there was no turning back. Winning the Greek Cup against the eternal rival PAO didn't just serve as a morale booster. Kostas Papanikolaou, who broke into tears before the ceremony, recalled that the last trophy he had lifted as a member of the Reds was back in 2016, and the club's last Cup title came in 2011.

Credit Olympiacos BC

When Monaco loomed as the last big obstacle separating Olympiacos from the Final Four, some of the team's fans thought the series was going to be over before it even started. However, Bartzokas and his players were aware of the level of talent they were going to face.

Ahead of Game 5, Papanikolaou talked about a "big chance", which Olympiacos shouldn't let go to waste. In the years that followed the elimination by Zalgiris, Greek media and fans started asking themselves how much time would it take for Greece to have a team in the Final Four again.

Something that everyone had used to take for granted over the course of three decades (1988-2018) has started to turn into a distant memory.

Credit Olympiacos BC

On Wednesday night, no football game was held at the nearby Georgios Karaiskakis stadium. However, fans' attention before the jump ball was on Olympiacos winning their 47th Greek League title after a 2-1 victory over PAOK.

Of course, that development was no surprise, as the Reds' football team had gained a considerable margin from their persecutors in the standings, but it was the prelude to a big night.

The home crowd had seen Olympiacos being labeled as the ultimate "refuse to lose" team in European basketball. As Bartzokas recalled in the postgame presser, the way Game 5 turned out brought back some vivid memories from the 2013 Game 5 in Piraeus, when Olympiacos needed a big comeback to knock Anadolu Efes down.

With Kevin Durant, Academy Award-winning actress Emma Stone and Oscar-nominated director Yorgos Lanthimos in the house, the media and some of the fans sitting close to the VIP seats spent the entire half-time break taking photos and videos from as close as possible.

For others, KD's visit gave them a perfect chance to vent out their anger after Durant celebrated some of Monaco's baskets in Game 4.

Durant himself seemed to welcome the fans' reactions with a smile. Obviously, the men standing next to him, one of them being Mike James' Greek agent Alexandros Katsaros, had already informed the Nets forward of the home crowd's intentions.

What Katsaros obviously didn't tell Durant was that the rowdy fans' hunger to see their team in a Final Four again was unquenchable. Whether the game was over or not, taking the court (or the football pitch, for that matter) has become something of a ritual in Greece.

It's a tradition that has held sway for ages, one that cannot simply be erased or forgotten by two years of COVID restrictions.

Besides, since there's a first time for everything, in Greece, COVID vaccination certificates are no longer required for fans to enter the arenas.

The videos and the images circulating across the internet depicting fans literally dancing and jumping around with each other and some of the ecstatic players will be the souvenirs of a night to remember.

Olympiacos' fans invaded the court right at the buzzer of Game 4 vs. FC Barcelona in 2015. Now, the team put together by Bartzokas, the city that will host the Final Four and the end of a five-year drought, provided some good reasons for all kinds of celebrations, no matter how impermissible, illegal, or even dangerous they were.

Ironically, Euroleague Basketball was quick to condemn the lasers, the flares, the invasion, and everything that took place on and off the court by issuing an announcement roughly an hour after Game 5.

Almost 24 hours later, the governing authority of Europe's premier competition imposed a €53.001 fine on the Reds, accompanied by one game behind closed doors. That's probably a way more lenient punishment than even the most fanatic of Greek fans would hope for.

If red was the prevailing color in the battles between Olympiacos and Monaco, it's also the color in which Belgrade will be painted. When EuroLeague made clear that the Final Four wouldn't be hosted in Germany and Berlin but in Belgrade, the Greeks received the news with a cunning smile.

What was rightfully taken from them by Zalgiris in 2018, they would be given a chance to reclaim in 2022.

Since there's no Maccabi, no Serbian teams, and -of course- no Panathinaikos around, Olympiacos fans are expected to dominate the stands at the Stark Arena by default.

Greeks are eager to travel by planes, trains, and cars, by land, air, and sea if necessary, to get there.

In Greek, the word apocalypse means revelation. Apart from any religious connotations, Olympiacos revealed their true colors in this series by beating Monaco three times. Olympiacos' fans also showed a part of the repressed feelings that five years of failures and COVID restrictions had forced them to conceal.

In a catastrophic season where each and every Greek basketball team came up short in European competitions, Olympiacos was a reminder of the good recent times. When opponents didn't succumb to the Reds' superior talent but rather to their tenacity and persistence.

The team that once was a punchbag for Final Four-bound squads has already surpassed everyone's expectations, but not their own, as Thomas Walkup told BasketNews a month ago.

Flares and invasions aside, Olympiacos didn't need to go Hollywood but offered Durant and Stone a taste of what a basketball game can be like in Europe.

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