By John Rammas/ irammas@eurohoops.net
The games between these two superclubs were always the focus of great interest. And there didn’t even have to be a trophy on the line. Any time is a good time for a Panathinaikos versus CSKA game. Like now. Round 19 in the EuroLeague will find them once again going against each other at Olympic Sports Center Athens and their places in the standings makes it all the more interesting. Eurohoops writes about what has made each one of their encounters on the court special.
Champions… again and again
With Panathinaikos counting six EuroLeague trophies and CSKA one more, one could expect that their encounters in championship games would have been more. And yet, in a total of 30 games between them (13 wins for Panathinaikos, 17 for CSKA) in the modern era of the EuroLeague, that number is quite small: just twice. Despite this, each of them has made history, not just because the title was on the line, but also because there was such a huge amount of interest on the court.
Their first final was on May 6, 2007, at Olympic Sports Center Athens, where Panathinaikos managed to confirm the prognostication that had the team going all the way from the beginning of that season. Theodoros Papaloukas had one of the best nights of his career (a career-high 23 points on 9-of-10 two-point shooting and 5-of-6 on free throws, together with 8 assists in 35:00), but that wasn’t enough to silence the fans in the stands and Panathinaikos, led by Dimitris Diamantidis (Final Four MVP with 9 points, 4.5 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.5 steals in 29:15), won 93-91 to return to the mountaintop for the fourth time in club history.
The scene was repeated two years later, this time at Berlin’s o2 World. Ramunas Siskauskas, who was in his second season with CSKA after a golden buyout from Panathinaikos, was the one who put the finishing touch on the final on May 3, but not in the way he and his team would have liked. His three-point shot at the buzzer was off target and the sound of the ball hitting the rim, the board and never going in was music to the ears of everyone in Panathinaikos, which prevailed 73-71.
Champions of two cities
At least Siskauskas had already managed to celebrate winning the EuroLeague twice: in his first season with Panathinaikos (2007) and his first with CSKA (2008). In fact, in 2007 he was a teammate of two Greek former CSKA players, Nikos Chatzivrettas (2002-03) and Dimos Dikoudis (2004-05), but also with Sani Becirovic, who in 2010-11 had split the season between Turk Telekom Ankara and CSKA, though without taking part in the competition since they had been knocked out during the regular season.
The second time, Siskauskas played against Drew Nicholas, who, after three seasons full of titles with Panathinaikos (2008-11) and a brief stint with Olimpia Milan, also played in CSKA for a short time in 2012, where he completed his career. 2016 EuroLeague champion Demetris Nichols followed the opposite route – from Moscow to Athens – a few years later, but only played in Green for one season, 2016-17.
Champions on both benches
CSKA’s current coach, Dimitris Itoudis, stand out more than all the others. Having been something more than an assistant coach in Panathinaikos in that golden period of 13 seasons (1999-2012), the 47-year-old connects the two teams like no other. When he led CSKA to the EuroLeague crown in 2016 as a head coach as well, it came on the court where he had done the same from Panathinaikos’s bench and, in fact, against CSKA: then the O2 World, now Mercedes-Benz Arena, by defeating Fenerbahce Istanbul 96-101 after overtime.
Their encounter in the Olympic Sports Center Athens will be the eighth with him on CSKA bench. The first was in 2015 (3-1 for CSKA in the playoffs), followed by another three in the regular season for an overall record of 5-2 in CSKA’s favor. Darryl Middleton is in a class of his own since he was crowned as a EuroLeague champion on the court with Panathinaikos in 2002 and on the bench with CSKA in 2016 as an assistant coach.