The lost magic and branching out in the second clip

The second match of the basketball league is not yet complete, and there are many voices about the arbitration. And in every field. The 2023/24 season didn’t start the way we wanted, but it started exactly as we expected.

The outburst of Giorgos Barzoukas in Alexandrou, after Olympiacos’ hard-fought victory over Aris and Vassilis Spanoulis’ victory in Andreas Papandreou, after Panathinaikos’s -19 defeat to Peristeri Buen, show two things since the beginning of the year.

How Olympiacos and Panathinaikos will face some tough evenings, perhaps several, in the Basketball League against prominent opponents who “smell blood” and how the debate over officiating has the potential to reach historic levels this year.

The bottom line is one. And it won’t change. Arbitration will always be “translated” as they see fit, the people making the decisions will always have different criteria from each other, and the teams that invest their money will always receive complaints about the grey.

The question is how Greek basketball will take steps forward when the season starts this way and the product is already taking a hit. Unfortunately, we don’t have the answer. The stakes are very high, and sometimes there is room for productive discussion, but the situation usually spirals out of control and gets worse.

Talking about arbitration every weekend is easy. In a forty-minute period of 60-100 whistles, there will be at least 10 whistles that will spark discussion. What will someone who deals continuously and exclusively with gray achieve? Maybe a water hole.

And if for teams, players, and coaches, it’s just part of the job to talk, analyze, and referee, how much more endurance must a simple basketball friend talk about the whistles after every game; What pleasure does he give and how difficult is it to understand that his entertainment, because sport should be entertainment, has turned into a toxic state that “corrupts” him?

The breed is really big

Giorgos Barzoukas was asked about the stress Olympiacos is experiencing after the home defeat to Barcelona. He was faced with three things: incomplete preparation, injuries and consecutive matches that did not allow him to work in training on improving the elements of his team’s game.

Olympiacos’ friends judged him because he didn’t have more players. Of course, without being able to answer the question of how Bartzukas manages nine or ten foreigners, when six of them can play in the tournament.

Opponents criticized him for “The same applies to everyone“What everyone is experiencing is inhumane,” Bartzukas said, and he was not exclusively referring to his team and those words are shared by many, if not all, of his teammates at the EuroLeague level.

Olympiacos this year is in a worse position compared to last year as the international players come from two consecutive FIBA ​​competitions and the two derbies with Panathinaikos came very early, and the result is that the organization is under pressure for results and tired athletes, who are at least 22-24 years old, to face several… problems.

Bartzukas clearly couldn’t calculate that he would hit his second ace (Williams-Goss), his second 2-3 (McKissic), his second four (Sikma) and his first lob (Vale) at the same time. None of them have the value of a Walkup or a Milutinov, and none of them can be described as irreplaceable, but when three or four are missing at once, the rotation collapses and with it the entire team’s energy level.

Of course, no coach builds his roster in the summer by predicting potential injuries. Even if Olympiacos has a player to replace Williams-Gus-McKissic right now, in a few days/weeks that player will be redundant. This is not the way teams are built, especially Olympiacos, which has been following a certain philosophy over the past few years, with clear roles and a basketball style that is currently being modified due to the departure of players.

The same is of course true in the case of Panathinaikos, who are playing a series of matches without their main organizer (Slokas) and without their most useful long (Mitoglou) who has also been pushed to show their best in the two matches against Greece. Eternal competitor. Bartzukas was smarter than Ataman when he talked about the fixtures, but so were many other coaches in the Europa League last year. From Trinchieri, who messed with the German League, to Sarunas Jasikevicius, who spoke of the annihilation of athletes.

What is undeniable is that the pressure on Olympiacos and Panathinaikos is already great and with the first week of the Euroleague approaching, players from both teams will need to step up. Lountzis, Larentzakis and Brazdeikis, Jay, Papapetrou and Balczerowski.

And while there is already a debate at Olympiacos about how much of a burden Thomas Walkup will bear, at Panathinaikos they expect Kostas Sloukas to enter training after the knock he sustained most likely because he also worked hard over the summer, as he pushed himself to the limits to enter the season in the best way possible.

The year is long, the two major Greek teams will go through periods of ups and downs, will suffer from injuries, and will have heavy victories and defeats, but also difficult matches in the basketball league. They will have to come to terms with reality, which says that they will emerge from two summers of FIBA ​​competition, and enter a year that will be completed in eight and a half months, with the electricity between them reminding us of the times when one thought and the rest was 24 hours a day…

If they don’t manage their rosters better, if they don’t protect their captive fighters, if they don’t find a way to get more substitutes, this… the scramble that feels like cars at turn two Grand Prix will hamper them for a long time in the pits.