By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
If you are a basketball junkie, or even worse, a basketball hipster, then your team should be Panionios Athens. It’s not just the fact that it won in overtime in its first EuroCup game since 2014 in dramatic fashion with back-to-back threes by Jalen Hands against NINERS Chemnitz.
In the constantly changing European basketball landscape, Panionios is one of the select teams that boasts a long and proud history. The club itself was established in 1890 in Smirni, the modern-day Izmir in Turkey, and the first time its athletes bounced a basketball was in 1919.
Since then, Panionios has always been a force in Greek basketball, especially in the 1990s, when it won the Greek Cup and twice reached the semifinals of the Korac Cup, the third-tier continental competition.
This didn’t happen by luck. Panionios was coached, among others, by the legendary Dusan Ivkovic. It remains the home of Fanis Christodoulou, a prototypical all-around European forward and European champion with the Greek national team, who is now part of the club’s management. And Panionios has enjoyed the services of Zarko Paspalj.
The two of them met recently, as the club honored its legacy (photo), and that’s just the icing on the cake.
Panionios is currently building a new arena on the site where the old arena resided, in the Athenian suburb of Nea Smirni. The club is currently playing in a recently refurbished arena in nearby Glyfada.
The club has the financial ability to sign players like Hands, last season’s top scorer in the Italian league, former Fenerbahce guard Markel Starks, and former Olympiacos players Michalis Lountzis, who was also the EuroCup round 1 co-MVP, and George Pappas.
And everyone knows where they are coming to… Or they are obliged to learn.
“I know that Panionios is a historic club, which is returning to an upward trajectory,” said Hands in his first interview with the club, and that’s pretty much the mantra that everyone has repeated on all occasions.
After, Panionios fans call the club affectionately “istorikos”, the Greek adjective for “historical”, as the club continues a line that started more than a century ago.
So don’t be surprised if Panionios ends up being a real factor in the EuroCup this season, despite having been outside of the competition for more than a decade.