Olympiacos Piraeus and Real Madrid have four titles and four runner-up finishes between them over the last decade, and now they are meeting the challenge of upholding winning traditions while changing on the fly.
Game of the Week: Olympiacos and Real, loyal to their legacies
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4 mins read
Each owns two of the last 10 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague titles, not to mention pairs of runner-up finishes, thanks to their mutual dedication to roster stability.
But after Olympiacos Piraeus and Real Madrid each saw an iconic player retire from their ranks last summer, both are very much changing on the fly as they meet up on Friday in Greece for the Game of the Week in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague.
Olympiacos debuted three players in its starting lineup last week – Tyler Dorsey, Moustapha Fall and Thomas Walkup – as it rounded on visiting Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz for a double-take 75-50 victory, the team's first on opening day since 2018.
Real also had a trio of newcomers for its Round 1 tipoff – Adam Hanga, Nigel Williams-Goss and Guerschon Yabusele – and registered an equally impressive 82-69 debut home win against none other than defending champion Anadolu Efes Istanbul.
After tonight, one of them will feel even more confident about its off-season moves by starting the season 2-0 when, looking at the schedule just a couple of weeks ago, either could have been projected at 0-2. Of such inspired starts are new beginnings forged.
But, different though both teams may appear, they have also preserved the ethos of continuity that served them so well over the last decade.
Starting on the benches, Georgios Bartzokas and Pablo Laso will always be linked by their first meeting ever, in the 2013 championship game, a first for each in the EuroLeague. Real led by 17 points after 10 minutes of that game, but Olympiacos scored 90 over the last three quarters to win 100-88 and repeat as champion.
Despite the retirement of Vassilis Spanoulis, three players from that double-title team – Kostas Sloukas, Kostas Papanikolaou and Georgios Printezis – still wear the Olympiacos jersey. Even though Sloukas, like Bartzokas, left and returned, such continuity almost a decade later is rare – except for in Madrid.
In 2015, Real took its revenge on Olympiacos in that season's title game, winning the club's first EuroLeague crown in 20 years at home in the Spanish capital. It was Real's third consecutive try, and on that night, no one was stopping the Spaniards, just as three years later Laso's charges would raise the trophy again.
Still wearing Real white since that 2013 championship game loss to Olympiacos are Sergio Llull and Rudy Fernandez, with Felipe Reyes having retired in June after 16 seasons with the club and Jaycee Carroll still waiting in the wings for a possible return after 10 in a row in the Spanish capital.
If then, as they say, the more things change, they more they stay the same, Olympiacos and Madrid are working on a balance between the two that insists upon continued competitiveness. In this narrative, there are no rewards for tanking, not that either of these clubs would contemplate such a thing anyway. Their pride, ambition and respect for their fans are too great for that.
Their only option when faced with the inevitable – an aging collection of stars – is to rewrite their stories of success. Edit here, embellish there, but start the new episode without throwing out the old script. In other words: honor the tradition that brought them here.
A rock-solid sense of self helps, which both Olympiacos and Real have down pat. The first two teams to play a game in the new EuroLeague back in the fall of 2000 remain loyal to their legacies and to the league they represent. Win or lose tonight, or in any season, they can be counted on to always strive to compete at the highest level. As a fan of basketball, you can't ask for anything more.