Βy Leyteris Moutis/ moutis@eurohoops.net
Nick Calathes, Daniel Hackett, Patric Young, Miroslav Raduljica… Greek basketball isn’t affected in the slightest by capital controls, memorandums, and the crisis! The “eternals” are completing one impressive move after the other, strengthening their roster and spending a lot of money.
Eurohoops.net makes an early report of the budgets of Olympiacos and Panathinaikos and concludes that the two Greek ambassadors in the Euroleague will have similar or even bigger budgets in the coming season compared to last year. Panagiotis and Giorgos Angelopoulos and Dimitris Giannakopoulos are not afraid to spend and once again this summer they have decided to invest knowing full well that because of the meager revenues that basket creates, at the end of the season they will have loses again.
More specifically, Dunston, Sloukas, Lafayette, Darden, Petway and Katsivelis whose contracts cost a little over 2,3 million euros last year, left Piraeus. On the other side, the newly acquired players are expected to receive a total amount that is slightly smaller than what those who left got last year. Patric Young had agreed two weeks ago with the Olympiacos, but he was late to sign the contract offered to him by the champions because of the situation in Greece.
Overall, though, the American center together with Hackett, Strawberry, Athinaiou and Toliopoulos are a more economical package that those who left. So, factoring in the planned readjustments in the contracts of those who stayed in Piraeus and the forthcoming additions, the overall budget of Olympiacos will be slightly bigger than last year’s.
Correspondingly, Panathinaikos completed Nick Calathes’s transfer which cost almost 2 million euros, while the budget that has been provided for the two bigmen is 1,8 million euros with Miroslav Raduljica having been already announced! However, the greens’ budget did not soar because of the planned large decrease of Dimitris Diamantidis’s contract. Also, the departure of the foreign players (Nelson, Slaughter, Blums, Batista, Morgan and Cooper) made even more “room” within the budget.
Conclusively, Panathinaikos will further continue to strengthen through transfers, but they’ve already increased their budget for their players’ contracts by almost 800.000 euros compared to last year.
For yet another summer the owners of Olympiacos and Panathinaikos are investing in the best “exportable product” Greece has to offer, basketball.