People say: “It's not the destination that matters, it's the journey.” This year, Vasilis Spanoulis' double dove reached the Final Four of the Basketball Champions League in Belgrade, in a dream season with a bittersweet ending, but one with a lot of pride.
The decision of the Peristeri-Boen management to hand over the keys of the team to Vassilis Spanoulis in the summer of 2022 was a bold one. This is because it is not a given that a great player will also become a good coach. Essentially the opposite may be the case.
But fortune favors the brave, and so the Western Suburbs team entered a new path, arduous, but full of beautiful moments. A path that eventually led her to Belgrade's Stark Arena for the final match of the 2024 Basketball Champions League.
Stark Arena was not only the promised land for Kyle Bill and his players, after the two-time Tenerife Cup hurdle of the experienced Marcelino Huertas-Giorgi Cermandini, but also Kyle Guy, who moved from Panathinaikos Actor to the Canary Islands mid-season and became a new weapon in the Chus' quiver. Vidoreta, proved invincible. Even on a night when Peristeri bwin managed to score 93 points with only 7 accurate three-pointers on 29 attempts.
However, the presence of the Greek club in the Serbian capital was the icing on the cake. It was the culmination of months of work by Vassilis Spanoulis and his partners, who in the summer of 2023 had to include eight new players in the squad and rebuild everything from scratch.
Guided, of course, by the very good run of the 2022/23 season, which was marked by the club's presence in the cup final, but also by finishing third in the Basketball League.
There was an appetite, there was a plan, and so expectations were created for something bigger in the 2023/24 season. And what could be better than a long – often difficult – but ultimately very successful European journey? Because if someone thinks that the Dove failed because of its loss to Tenerife, then they are certainly very wrong.
And it is certain that the fans of the West Bank Princes – in the hundreds who traveled with their team to Belgrade and did not stop singing for a single moment, but also those who watched the Final Four semi-finals from afar – have nothing but pride in what V-Span was able to achieve with the athletes.
They did not stop fighting for a single moment with all their might inside the four barque lines. It's just that the roof has already been pierced, and it will be very difficult to make another crossing. Could this happen in the (near) future? We'll have to wait for the episodes to find out.
Until then, we have to remember perhaps with a bittersweet feeling this entire European journey that began on October 17 at Le Mans in France and will end at the Stark Arena on Sunday, April 28. Ideally with a win over Murcia.
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