Obradovic: Panathinaikos Was a Great Organization in 2012

The Telekom Center Athens was packed on Wednesday evening, though not with fans, with the entire “green” family. Just days before the start of the new Euroleague season, club owner Dimitris Giannakopoulos gathered the players, the coaching staff, club employees and the people who work at the arena every day. The occasion was a pre-season family gathering, and the main word belonged to the man who had returned to that space after a long absence, Zeljko Obradovic.

The Serbian coach did not hide his emotions. He first addressed Giannakopoulos, the man who, as he put it himself, had given him the chance to return.

“Mr. President, my good friend Dimitri, thank you for giving me the opportunity to come back.”

There is a small discrepancy between two reports on the same event. Mondo writes that Obradovic is returning to Panathinaikos after 13 years, while Kurir states that the break lasted 14 years. In his speech, the coach himself did not mention the number of years of the break, instead going back to one specific year, 2012, when he last sat on the “greens’” bench. With the players he worked with back then, he said, he spent 13 seasons.

“To have the joy of meeting again the players we worked with for 13 years, to have the feeling that we built something great.”

Two club legends, Mike Batiste and Dimitris Diamantidis, were also at the gathering, so the Athens hall that evening brought together several generations of people tied to the club. Obradovic then delivered the line that will be quoted the most, a comparison with the period when he was last on that bench.

“Panathinaikos was a great organization in 2012. Today it’s something else!”

The line was not addressed only to the players. Obradovic tied it to the impression he had gotten from the people at the club who work behind the scenes, from those who run the Telekom Center, as proof of how much the system around the team has grown since his first spell in charge. He did not hand out big promises, but he made clear what he expects from himself and from the locker room.

“On my behalf and on behalf of the players, I will try to promise that we will fight for the best results.”

He added that the team has to live up to what is known about Panathinaikos across Europe, the club culture on which he is building every next step.

“We will give everything we have, so that this team lives up to the level that the culture and tradition of Panathinaikos deserve.”

Behind the emotional speech lies a concrete problem the club is dealing with ahead of the start of the season. Panathinaikos went through preparations without four players: Kendrick Nunn, Nigel Hayes-Davis, Nikos Rogavopoulos and, in the last few days, Mustafa Fall. It is already certain that the first two will not be ready for the start of the season, while the health of the other two, Fall included, is still being assessed. For a squad put together as a genuine dream team, this is the first serious test of patience, and it has come before the season has even started.

The schedule, at least partly, works in Obradovic’s favor. In the first eight rounds of the Euroleague, the Athens “greens” play outside Greece only once, against Partizan in Belgrade, so they will spend most of the opening stretch of the season in front of their own fans, in the same hall where this time it was the coach, not the result, doing the talking.

Obradovic did not return to Athens just to revisit the old story of the years he shared with the Giannakopoulos family. He came back with a team many in Europe are already calling a dream team, and with a message that the club’s name and tradition now have to translate into something tangible on the court. The season starts in a few days, the first real test arrives already at the Euroleague opener, and only then will it become clear how much of last night’s words was a promise, and how much was an estimate.