By George Adamopoulos / gadamopoulos@eurohoops.net
More than two decades after the historic triumph, Lazaros Papadopoulos revisited the night Panathinaikos prevailed in the Final Four of the 2001-02 EuroLeague season.
Making an appearance on the 11th installment of the Final Four Stories by Stoiximan, Lazos looked back at a different era of European basketball, while painting a vivid picture of a team so confident in their impending victory that they had already decoded how to spend their bonuses before the opening tip-off in Bologna’s PalaMalaguti.
“There was the bonus we were going to get,” recalled the 45-year-old former player. “We had already made plans for what we were going to get and what we were going to buy before we even played. Everyone, now in their youth, everyone thought whatever they could imagine.”
While some of his teammates eyed cars, the young center had his heart set on a new watch, a personal trophy for a 22-year-old in his debut season with the Greens.
The championship game against Kinder Bologna was an uphill battle on paper. Played on Easter Sunday, Panathinaikos faced a powerhouse roster featuring the likes of Manu Ginobili and Rashard Griffith. Yet, as he watched from the bench, Papadopoulos wasn’t intimidated by the opposition’s frontline.
Observing the tactical landscape, he noted how the Italian side focused its entire defensive energy on neutralizing the legendary Dejan Bodiroga.
“They had chosen to trap Bodiroga,” he explained to Eurohoops. “The other tall guys were playing one-on-one, and I saw that they weren’t doing it. I was like, ‘When am I going to get inside so I can play one-on-one now?’”
He recognized that with shooters like Ibrahim Kutluay spacing the floor and Bodiroga drawing double teams even without the ball, the interior was wide open for a center with the right footwork.
When coach Zeljko Obradovic finally threw him into the fray, Papadopoulos proved to be the game-changer. In just 17 minutes, he neutralized the physical presence of Griffith, tallying 12 points and five rebounds. His contribution provided the necessary interior balance that allowed Bodiroga to claim MVP honors and Kutluay to sink the dagger three-pointer that secured the victory.
Reflecting on how the game has evolved since that night in Italy, Papadopoulos noted that the basketball of the early 2000s belonged to a different era, one of sophisticated post play and deliberate systems.
“Basketball has changed a lot. Basketball has become faster,” he mused, describing himself and his contemporaries as ‘dinosaurs’ of a lost style. “In those days, we put the ball in the paint more. There were various systems, and it wasn’t just that they posted the five or the four. They also made a lot of posts on the three.”