The attention of true local basketball followers, in the past week, was surely focused on Serbia and Montenegro where the European Championships were being played. Yours truly followed this tournament (and still has a backlog of recorded games to watch!) with great interest as this was also the first time that three referees were used for such championships.

At the end, following the final played last Sunday, one could state that eighteen years after practically surprising many and even stealing the hearts of basketball fans all over Europe, Greece did it again with their determined, a massive commitment to defence and never-say-die attitude.

In fact such attitude clearly manifested itself in two particular matches when the Greeks came from behind to beat Russia and France in the quarter-finals and semi-finals, respectively, before knocking off Germany, with a convincing 78-62 victory, to win the gold medal in front of a rasping pro-Greece, sold out crowd of 19,000 at the Belgrade Arena.

Another important element leading to the Greek success was the presence of their coach Panagiotis Yannakis who was then seen thrown in the air by his players after the final. Yannakis, who is a prominent figure in Greek sport, was the captain of the Greek team that won the European crown in 1987 (at that time the Greeks were also, like this year, not one of the pre-tournament favourites) and this was a also a big factor motivating the same Greek players.

Despite his renowned occasional temper when faced with tough officiating calls, Yannakis managed to be a motivator and have a calming influence on his team. In fact, whilst watching all the games, one could see that some coaches blew their cool and picked up technical fouls when their teams were behind. Yannakis however showed great maturity as he visibly did not panic, for example, when Russia built an 10+ point first-half lead, or when France, amazingly, led by seven points with 43 seconds left in the semi-final that will never be forgotten by many basketball aficionados.

In the latter moment, one of the Greek players (some of them had started playing basketball after seeing Yannakis and Nikos Gallis lead the Greeks to the 1987 success) was reported as stating that their coach just told them not to look at the scoreboard but just play their game till the final buzzer.

These championships demonstrated also a very important fact as it was a competition that featured a number of NBA-based players. However it was the team without a single NBA player that took home the gold medal thereby demonstrating the importance of team basketball.

For example, Greece took out Russia, France and Germany in the quarters, semis and final to claim the gold. Each of those teams was led by top NBA players in Andrei Kirilenko, Tony Parker and Dirk Nowitzki respectively.

Germany won the silver medal and this was quite beyond the expectations of many including the Germans themselves. Prior to the tournament the German coach Dirk Bauermann said it would be difficult for Germany (who had won the Europeans on home soil back in 1993) to finish in the top six. Even team superstar Nowitzki confessed that no one basically expected them to get this far.

Dirk Nowitzki claimed the Most Valuable Player award at the 2005 EuroBasket and even topped the competition’s All-Tournament team.The Dallas Mavericks star went into the final as the tourna ment’s leading scorer (26.7 points per game).Nowitzki was also voted by the media as the top power forward of the tournament.

He was joined on the All-Tournament team by the Greek guards Theodoros Papaloukas and Dimitrios Diamantidis, who led the tournament in assists (5 assists per game). Diamantidis will also remember dearly the moment he scored a game winning three-pointer in the final seconds against France to move the Greeks into the final.

France’s Boris Diaw was picked as the top small forward for his all around game in leading the French to the bronze medal whereas Spain’s Juan Carlos Navarro was selected as the top shooting guard.

Fair play and sportsmanship was also witnessed in the majority of moments.

One of the greatest such moments was three minutes from the end of the final when, with the game outcome without doubt, Nowitzki was substituted ad subsequently received a loud standing ovation (one must remember that the vst majority of spectators in the packed 19,000 arena were Greek fans).

On the other extreme, maybe the lowest image of sportsmanship was witnessed at the end of the quarter-final between Spain and Croatia. The game was decided in overtime but chaos broke loose in the final seconds as the Croats protested harshly and blamed the referees for their loss.

There were also some surprises. Personally I think the greatest surprise was the early elimination of the home team Serbia and Montenegro. This is a basketball-crazy nation and they surely banked on figuring prominently and possibly winning these Championships.

However, despite also having NBA-based players in the team, they had inconsistent performances and their coach, Zeljko Obradovic, who led many teams to success including his country to European success in 1995 and 1997, vented his fury after the team’s elimination against France and also questioned the commitment of certain players in the team.

Team manager and ex-national team captain Savic stated that his country’s players have lost their focus since crossing the Atlantic to play in the NBA. In fact he said “The problem is to educate the young NBA players that it is not how much money you receive that defines if you are a good player, you are a good player if you win something. This is what is like in Yugoslavia. Just because you earn $10million a year does not make you a great player.”

Local followers might also easily remember the massive win Russia registered over Italy in the group games. The Russians led 52-20 in half-time and this demonstrates also that such off-days can also happen to good technically prepared teams like Italy.

Turkey was another poor performer despite having great hopes. Their NBA players had a tournament that they would like to forget as soon as possible whilst the team chemistry was suspect at best.

Mehmet Okur did not start in several games for Turkey whilst his his teammate (also NBA-based) Hidayet Turkoglu shot an awful 2-for-15 in Turkey’s elimination game loss to Germany.

Other NBA players of note faired well in the Championships and these include Russia’sAndrei Kirilenko and Viktor Khyrapa. Croatia’s NBA players, namely Gordan Giricek, Zoran Planinic and Mario Kasun, were also solid.

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