First off, I did not watch last nights’ game of Panathinaikos vs. Partizan Belgrade. Christophe did and wrote a very detailed report about it.
But what does this mean for Panathinaikos now? Of course, it means that they won’t make it to the Final Four, which was the minimum goal Panathinaikos had. A team with former NBA players such as Sarunas Jasikevicius (Golden State), Mike Batiste (Grizzlies), Vassilis Spanoulis (Rockets) as well as last years’ Final Four MVP Dimitris Diamantidis is out of the European competition at a stage probably (all of our 24 journalists had Panathinaikos on the list for the final four) nobody would have predicted in the beginning of the season.
Talking about the beginning of the season: Remember how Panathinaikos got killed by the “22 games in a row” Houston Rockets. Now it is easy to say – well Houston is a great team and Panathinaikos is out, but each of us probably expected more.
Why did we expect more? Just because Panathinaikos has all these stars and big names on their roster? If we take a look on the games played by Panathinaikos this season we should have seen the signs:
Panathinaikos won against Roma by only 3 points and even lost the second game, against Bamberg they only won by 5, Partizan was beaten by 4 points, 1 point and 2 points. The only two games, Athens won by a lot was against one of the worst teams of this years’ Euroleague – Chorale Roanne.
The only thing Panathinaikos will hope for now is that long time city rival Olympiakos won’t qualify for the Top8 tonight against Real Madrid. That would probably the even worse for Panathinaikos fans than not making it to the Final Four in Madrid.
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