This one’s semi-viral, so you may have seen it already. If not, do check out the Amazing Spiderman (Who is this mysterious webslinger, anyway?) playing some serious one-on-one streetball. Let’s see Bruce Wayne do this…
Shout out to heinnews for the tip!
Daryl Morey was the assistant GM in Houston when Spanoulis played there, and is now the main GM of the team, and the team also has the same owner, as when Spanoulis played there.
Morey was every bit as involved and as much to blame for what happened to Spanoulis as Van Gundy was, and Spanoulis said more than once in interviews that he felt mislead and lied to by the Houston assistant GM, which was Morey.
Spanoulis and Papanikolaou are good friends, and Papanikoloau looks up to Spanoulis as a mentor.
Spanoulis has spent years working with this guy, helping him, training him, grooming him, mentoring him, etc. These guys would often hang out with each other, even in summers during the off season, and Pap has given interviews where he talks about how much admiration and respect he has for Spanoulis as a player and a person.
I am absolutely certain that Pap would never ever consider to play for the Houston Rockets. He knows every single thing that Morey said to Spanoulis that was a lie and he also knows how the Rockets organization twisted his words and said untrue things about him to the media in Houston, which then printed those untrue things. How they made fun of his mom, made fun of Spanoulis himself – “his mom calls us crying begging for her som to come home”, “he says he is T-Mac of Greece”, “great T-Mac is T-Mac here”
These types of things all originating from Rockets club to Houston media and then getting printed, never once with an apology or retraction, and to this day take as true by Rockets fan base.
Not to mention lies about guaranteed playing time and a role in the team’s rotation, which were never true. Lies told to Spanoulis’ agent when he came to talk with Morey and Dawson, that they assured his agent he would soon be in the rotation and not to demand a trade, even though other teams wanted him, and just be patient, etc.
Pap is also aware of how the Rockets fan base talks about Spanoulis and how hated he is there and how the Rockets fans say to this day he was the worst player in NBA history, could never play in NBA, etc. I know Pap knows about this because he mentioned it when the Knicks drafted him that after their fans booed him, he was aware of this and how Rockets fans had treated Spanoulis very unfairly and said lies bout him when he went to NBA. He said he strongly considered this in his thoughts on what NBA teams he would consider to play for – how their fan bases talk about other Greek NBA players, especially Spanoulis.
Papanikolao has said many times he considers Spanoulis the best player in Europe, the best Greek player, the best player he ever played with and that he is definitely hoping at one day to have a chance to be as good as Spanoulis is – just a chance at that would make him happy. And so he is reading on the Rockets fan site clutchfans.net from the Rockets fans about what an awful scrub Spanoulis is, how he could never make it in NBA, how he’s “not athletic enough for NBA”, (Spanoulis of course is more athletic than Pap is) etc.
So what in the world is Pap going to think about those Rockets fans, when he personally considers Spanoulis the best player he has ever seen in Europe?
I would say with complete confidence that Pap would never play for that Houston Rockets team or fan base. They absolutely destroyed Spanoulis’ NBA dream and career and they still laugh about it and still bash the guy and still make jokes about him, a guy that Pap respects and admires deeply.
It really shows that there are some very strange ideas in that Rockets organization that they would think they could get a friend of a guy that they completely treated like a piece of trash to play for them.
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