Panathinaikos and Olympiacos Sweep Turkish Visitors in EuroLeague

By Taki Panos

Somewhere in the middle of the second quarter on Thursday night, Sylvain Francisco decided a close game had gone on long enough. In the space of 89 seconds he scored seven points, the Telekom Center got loud the way only an Athens gym gets loud, and Panathinaikos never really looked back. When the horn sounded, the Greens had beaten Fenerbahce 92-74, and a team from Istanbul that walked in unbeaten walked out at 3-1.

Twenty-four hours later, Olympiacos finished the double, pulling away from Anadolu Efes for an 89-66 win. Two Turkish visitors, two comfortable Greek wins, one week. I don't need to explain to anybody who grew up in a Greek household why a week like that goes down a little smoother with the morning coffee. Let's just enjoy it like grown-ups.

Start with the Greens, because right now they are the story of the young season. Thursday's win moved Panathinaikos to 4-0, and as TalkBasket noted, that makes them one of only two unbeaten teams after four rounds, alongside Valencia. The fine print, which eKathimerini was quick to point out, is that all four of those wins came at home. The Greens have yet to play a road game.

For a quarter, this one was a coin flip. TalkBasket counted seven lead changes in the first ten minutes, with Konstantinos Mitoglou, Guerschon Yabusele, Nigel Hayes-Davis and Francisco trading baskets with Talen Horton-Tucker, Braxton Key and Will Clyburn. Then came Francisco's burst, a 46-41 lead at the half, and a third-quarter flurry from Nikos Rogkavopoulos, who scored eight points in less than two minutes to push the margin into double digits. By the second half the lead had stretched as far as 20, at 78-58.

Mathias Lessort and Hayes-Davis led the way with 19 points apiece, and Francisco added 17 with seven assists. Lessort also pulled down eight rebounds and finished with a performance index rating of 30, the best of anybody on the floor. What impressed me more than the scoring was the other end. Fenerbahce turned it over 17 times and made just 9 of 30 from three, which tells you how little was easy for them once the Greens settled in.

I'll also tip my cap to the homegrown guys. On a roster full of big names from everywhere, it was a Greek forward, Rogkavopoulos, who delivered the stretch that broke the game open, and Mitoglou was in the mix early. My one bar-stool caveat: four home wins are a terrific start, not a resume. The first real road test comes Tuesday in Belgrade against Partizan.

Then there's Olympiacos, playing its first home game of the season at the SUNEL Arena in Ano Liosia, AEK's home court, as eKathimerini reported. Olympiacos at home in AEK's building is a sentence I never expected to type, but the Reds looked plenty comfortable. They arrived needing a response after their first loss of the season in Bologna against Virtus, and according to eKathimerini, the defense was exactly what had been worrying coach Georgios Bartzokas.

It wasn't pretty for a while. Olympiacos led 26-16 after the first quarter, then managed just nine points in the second, and Efes crept within 35-31 at the break. Then Cody Miller-McIntyre came out of the locker room and started living in the paint, scoring eight quick points as Olympiacos ripped off a 19-5 run to go up 54-36, per Greek City Times. From there the Reds put up 27 points in each of the last two quarters, Eurohoops noted, and won the boards 49-31, including 21 offensive rebounds.

Here's the part I like most: Olympiacos made only 8 of 29 threes and still won by 23. Teams that can win while shooting cold usually have something sturdy underneath. Jean Montero had four points through three quarters and finished with 16, scoring 12 in the fourth. Tyrique Jones added 11 points and six rebounds, Sasha Vezenkov, Tyson Ward and Ndiaye chipped in nine apiece, Kostas Papanikolaou hit two threes for eight, and Evan Fournier handed out six assists. Cameron Payne led Efes with 12 in his debut, and Pablo Laso's team, without the injured Mike James, slipped to 1-3.

So where does that leave us? Honestly, it's October, and four rounds of a EuroLeague season are an appetizer, not the main course. But the two clubs look different in a useful way. Panathinaikos is the team having the most fun right now, and Olympiacos is the team that showed it can fix a problem in a week. If both keep that up, the spring could get very interesting in Athens and Piraeus.

If you're following from New York, Boston, Chicago or Melbourne, our guide on how to watch Greek TV online is a good place to start, and if you'd rather see a game in person on your next trip, slot one in between the sights from our list of things to do in Athens. Football people can get the backstory on the Reds in our Olympiacos history, and Giannis fans can catch up on his poster dunk in his first Miami home game.

Next up, Panathinaikos takes that perfect record on the road to Belgrade, while Fenerbahce goes home to host Zalgiris. For more stories like this one, keep an eye on our Greek Sports section. For one week, at least, both halves of Greek basketball's great divide got to go to bed happy. That doesn't happen often. Enjoy it.

Sources: TalkBasket, eKathimerini, Greek City Times, Eurohoops.

Image: Panathinaikos BC crest, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).