We have some more national champions to congratulate today, and we’ve also witnessed some nice “battles” in the paint. Get ready for the latest edition of the BallinEurope playoff roundup!
Let’s start in Greece, where Panathinaikos Athens won the championship again after beating Olympiakos, 3 games to 2. The Greens, supported by their usual loud ‘n’ rowdy crowd won the decisive game in the OAKA but the game had some trouble actually reaching completion. With six seconds to go, Olympiakos knew that it was over, and one of their players launched the ball into the stands with his foot. All the Oly guys exited the gym and only two or three reds remained in the arena.
Well, there were still six seconds remaining.
And after several minutes, some of the Olympiakos players retook the floor to finish the game. Nothing special, as our Greek readers would say.
In Spain, TAU Ceramica won the Championship with a 3-0 sweep of AXA FC Barcelona. The fact that we saw Barcelona in the finals may have been a surprise in itself, so the domination by the most regular team of recent years in Spain was predictable. Pete Mickael was named Finals MVP. Check out the absolute beauties of the final with some great basketball action here:
In Slovenia, the plays may be not so pretty, but the action on the court is at least as physical. In game three of the finals between eternal champion Olimpija Ljubljana and Helios Domzale, Robert Troha and the Euroleague team’s American trio came closer, but see the results for yourself. All three Americans and Troha are suspended for Game 4 on Saturday in Domzale.
actually the oly players didn’t leave the floor because they realized they were losing, they left because at about 6 seconds before the end of the game pao fans wer launching stuff into the arena and were aiming for the oly bench, so they left to protect themselves from the ‘celebrations’. Various PAO players got very upset about it and came down hard on the atmoshere in those games in the post-games interviews, saying that the fans are not respecting their efforts against a tough oly team when they won’t even let them finish the game in a civilized fashion. I dn’t think this whole business is over, snce coach G. took on Oly the animosities between the fans of both teams have really gotten out of hand and everyone is upsed with that, especially since most players on both teams are friends and regularly play for the national team and dont see steep competition as war.. Diamantidis even started shouting and kicking the air when that happened and prettyt every greek player who has a blog (which is very modern I am led to understand) devoted about half of their article to that very topic. So no, oly players didn’t just leave because they were bad losers. and even if they had won they wouldn’t have been awarded thechampionshiop righ there for ’safety reasons’. great way to win a championship you’ve worked your butt off for, eh?
aaaaahhh..and not to let pao look bad alone, in game 4 on oly’s arena, the oly fans managed to set fire to the pao bench during the beginning of the game with flares..so it’s both sides being involved in equal fashion. that can only lead to the conclusion that aris is the best greek team, if fans are any indication…