By George Adamopoulos / gadamopoulos@eurohoops.net
Giannis Bourousis revisited the pressure of facing Olympiacos in a championship game of the 2014-15 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague season at Madrid’s Barclaycard Center, during his appearance on the 13th installment of Final Four Stories by Stoiximan. For Real Madrid, the 2013 Final loomed large until the very last second. In a retrospective of the 2015 Final, the former center detailed the pervasive panic that the Greek powerhouse instilled across Europe at the time.
“Olympiacos had built a fear, especially the way they won in the last seconds or minutes, with the passion that Olympiacos played,” Bourousis recalled. “They had this fear in general, but I think all the teams in Europe at the time. Olympiacos, with their roster, players like Spanoulis, Papanikolaou, and Printezis, of course, never gave up. There was anxiety, pressure, and fear until the buzzer for us to know that we had won the game.”
To neutralize the threat, the strategy focused almost exclusively on limiting the impact of Olympiacos’ legendary floor general Vassilis Spanoulis. “Vassilis was certainly one of the key players for Olympiacos all these years, but the plan was basically to play very hard on the pick-and-roll and get the ball out of his hands,” noted the Karditsa native.
The journey to the 2015 title was paved by the heartbreak of 2014, a season he describes as ‘a lost year’ despite the team playing ‘amazing basketball’. The subsequent additions of veterans Andres Nocioni and Gustavo Ayon proved to be the missing pieces, Bourousis reaffirmed, though the path remained treacherous. “Towards the end, the pressure came a little in the Playoffs because we had beaten Efes with some difficulty, so maybe we were a little more shaken up by then,” he admitted.
Bourousis also reflected on advice from another European great, Nikola Vujcic: “Giannis, you don’t know if you’ll play in a Final Four again, so if you find yourself there again and win, enjoy it.”
Having reached three Final Fours previously without a trophy, he took those words to heart during the celebrations. “I was with my first daughter at the time, hugging her at the awards ceremony,” he said, marking the moment the anxiety finally gave way to triumph.