Panathinaikos Beat Partizan 72-55 in Belgrade to Stay Perfect

By Taki Panos

Zeljko Obradovic walked into the Belgrade Arena on Tuesday night to a rapturous welcome from the fans of the club he used to coach, and then his Panathinaikos team spent the second half taking their evening apart. The Greens beat Partizan 72-55 in round five of the EuroLeague, as ERT reported, moving to 5-0 and handing the Serbian side its first home loss of the season. It was also Panathinaikos' first road game of the campaign. Some first road game.

If you are just catching up, the storyline was all about the bench. Obradovic won five EuroLeague titles in his first spell with Panathinaikos, as the EuroLeague's own game notes recall, and after resigning at Partizan last December he returned to the Greens this season, fourteen years after he last led them in an official game, as SKWEEK noted. Before the trip he said, per Srpske Novine, that "the game against Partizan is not the most important one for me, it is important for the team."

It did not start like a statement win. Panathinaikos looked nervous early, missing their first three three-point attempts and four of their first six free throws, according to ERT, and Partizan led 11-6 after six minutes with Kevarrius Hayes doing damage inside. The Greens' defense tightened over the last two minutes of the quarter, and Mathias Lessort, a former Partizan player himself, beat the buzzer to tie it 16-16. A useful reminder that the team that beat Fenerbahce at home last week still had to prove it could travel.

The second quarter belonged to Nigel Hayes-Davis. He scored 10 of his game-high 14 points in the period, per ERT, including a pair of threes that made it 35-27 in the 19th minute, the Greens' biggest lead of the half. Juancho Hernangomez added a three of his own along the way, and Panathinaikos went into the locker room up 35-28. Hayes-Davis only returned from a hand injury at the start of the month, as Basketnews reported, and he already looks like the man this team turns to when it needs a basket.

Then came the third quarter, the one Partizan fans will want to forget. Panathinaikos held the hosts to single digits in the period, and three straight threes from Rogkavopoulos, Grant and Yabusele sparked a 9-0 run that pushed the lead to 16 early in the second half. Partizan coach Joan Penarroya called a timeout to stop the bleeding, as Vradini described it, but it kept coming, with Hayes-Davis, Yabusele and Sylvain Francisco all hitting from deep. By the 27th minute the margin was 21, the biggest of the night.

The quiet hero of that stretch was Moustapha Fall. ERT wrote that he had put on "the playmaker's cape" (translated from Greek), kicking the ball out to the shooters who kept making him look smart, and Vradini credited him with six points, seven rebounds and a block. Lessort did the dirty work too, with four points, nine rebounds, four assists and three steals. Neither will lead the highlight reels, but a team that gets that much from its big men without needing them to score is a team that is very hard to plan against.

For Partizan, it was a rough night. Hayes was the only home player to reach double figures, with 10 points, according to ERT, and the Serbian side dropped to 3-2 after arriving unbeaten in its own building. Fifty-five points at home in the EuroLeague is a number that tells the story better than I can. They hung around for a half, then never found a rhythm once the Greens' defense locked in after the break, and the fourth quarter was little more than a formality.

The emotional side of the night deserves its own paragraph. Vradini called it a special evening for Obradovic, who returned to the home of "his beloved Partizan," the club "with which he has written his own history," and wrote that "Zoc" wounded his former team (translated from Greek). There is something very basketball about that: the crowd cheers the man before tip-off, then watches his team beat theirs by 17, and everybody goes home with complicated feelings.

There was depth everywhere, too. Hernangomez finished with 10 points and four rebounds in his return to EuroLeague action, per ERT, and Mitoglou and Kalaitzakis scored the Greens' first baskets of the night, per Vradini. When you can win by 17 on the road with your leading scorer at 14 points, it means the work is spread across the whole rotation. That is very much an Obradovic team trait, and SKWEEK made the same point after the season opener: defense first, and contributions from everyone available.

Five games in, the Greens are perfect, and the last three wins have come by 23, 18 and 17 points. They beat Maccabi Tel Aviv 90-67 and Fenerbahce 92-74 at home, and on Tuesday they did something similar on one of the loudest floors in Europe. It is still October, and a 16-16 first quarter shows there is rust to shake off. But the shape of this team is already clear: defend, share the ball, and trust whoever is open.

My take: this was the most convincing win of the young season, precisely because it came on the road against a team that had not lost at home, in a building that usually makes visitors miserable. I would not crown anybody in October. But Panathinaikos now look like a team that can survive a shaky start and pull away late, and that is a trait you usually see from contenders in the spring, not the fall.

Next up, Panathinaikos host Hapoel Tel Aviv and their Greek coach Dimitris Itoudis at the Telekom Center on Friday, October 16, at 9:15 p.m. Greek time, per Vradini, while Partizan visit Fenerbahce in Istanbul on Thursday. If you are planning to catch a game in person, our list of things to do in Athens will fill the rest of your trip. For more stories like this one, keep an eye on our Greek Sports section. Five down. Plenty to go.

Sources: ERT, Vradini, SKWEEK, Srpske Novine, Basketnews.

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