Olympiacos Beat Kolossos 99-83 as Montero Scores 30

By Taki Panos

Some players need a few shots to find the range. Jean Montero did not need any. The guard scored 30 points on Sunday afternoon as Olympiacos beat Kolossos Rhodes 99-83 at Sunel Arena to move to 2-0 in the Greek Basket League, and he did it in well under half a game of playing time, as to10.gr reported.

The numbers are hard to argue with. Montero went 6 of 8 from three and 4 of 7 inside the arc, added three assists and four steals, and posted a +30 index rating in 23 minutes and 28 seconds. to10.gr called it his best performance so far in the red and white shirt, and I am not going to argue. Thirty points in 23 minutes is the kind of efficiency that makes a coach rethink his rotation charts.

If you are new to Greek basketball, Olympiacos and Panathinaikos are the two giants, with budgets and expectations to match, and every domestic game is judged against that standard. Our list of the top basketball clubs in Greece gives you the wider picture. For a club like Kolossos from Rhodes, a trip to face the Reds is a chance to make a statement, and for most of the afternoon they made one.

This was not a walkover, and that deserves credit. Olympiacos led 27-22 after the first quarter and 54-41 at halftime, according to the official box score, but the visitors kept coming. Kolossos won the third quarter 26-23 and trailed only 77-67 heading into the fourth. At that point the home crowd was a little quieter than it had been an hour earlier.

Then it got genuinely tight. Naftemporiki reported that Kolossos cut the gap to 85-80 in the 36th minute. That is the moment when a big club either wobbles or responds, and Georgios Bartzokas's team responded. Olympiacos closed the game on a 14-3 run to finish at 99-83, and the final margin hides how nervous those few minutes felt.

Montero got the headlines, but the scoring was spread around. Sasha Vezenkov added 16 points, Evan Fournier had 14, and Kostas Papanikolaou chipped in 8, per to10.gr's box score. Nikola Milutinov did his usual work inside with 10 rebounds. As a team, Olympiacos shot 14 of 28 from three, which is exactly 50 percent and very hard to beat on any floor, against any opponent, in any competition.

That depth is the real story for me. Early in a season, when a coach is still sorting out rotations and minutes, it is nice to see a game where one player gets hot and nobody else needs to force anything. The Greek title race tends to come down to small edges in the spring, and a roster that can lean on a different scorer each night is one of them. Bartzokas will like what he saw.

There is also a lesson in how they handled the run. When Kolossos closed to five, nobody panicked and nobody started hunting hero shots. The ball kept moving, the open man kept getting it, and the lead grew again. That kind of calm is not glamorous, and it never shows up in a highlight package, but it is what separates a team that wins in October from one that wins in June.

The result also fits a strong start across competitions. Olympiacos beat Anadolu Efes 89-66 in the EuroLeague earlier in the week, which we covered alongside Panathinaikos's win over Fenerbahce in our EuroLeague roundup. Two games in the Greek league, two wins, a big European result, and a guard playing with real confidence. That is a good week by any measure.

For Kolossos, there is no shame here. Gazzetta described the Rhodes side as fighting to the finish for a big result, and a team that can push Olympiacos to five points late in the fourth quarter on their own floor will take points off plenty of opponents this season. They should travel home disappointed but not discouraged.

My take: Montero's afternoon was the kind of game that makes a player believe in his role. If he keeps shooting like this, opponents will have to adjust, and every defender who drifts toward him opens up more space for Vezenkov and Fournier. That is a nice problem for Bartzokas to have, and a very unpleasant one for everyone else in the league to solve.

The schedule does not slow down, with the EuroLeague and the domestic league taking turns all autumn. For more stories like this one, keep an eye on our Greek Sports section. On Sunday, at least, the scouting report on Olympiacos got one line longer: do not leave Montero open. Easier said than done.

Sources: Olympiacos BC, to10.gr, Naftemporiki, Gazzetta.

Image: Olympiacos BC roster, November 2023, by Zafer, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).