Olimpia will close the last week of its true preseason in Athens to face Olympiacos, the European runner-up. On Friday the two teams will have a scrimmage behind closed doors, on Sunday at 8.30pm they will play an official game on the night dedicated to Vassilis Spanoulis, the great EuroLeague all-time leading scorer who played for Olympiacos the majority of his career. They will be games of relative value because Olimpia will be very short-handed, with seven players missing, including the five internationals from the World Cup, who will join the group when work resumes next week (Nicolò Melli, Stefano Tonut, Pippo Ricci, Maodo Lo and Johannes Voigtmann ), plus the injured Billy Baron and Diego Flaccadori. The nine remaining players will be supported by Vojislav Stojanovic and Samuele Miccoli as they did in all the other pre-season commitments.
Olympiacos is returning most of the team that played in the EuroLeague final and won the Greek title during last season. The most relevant departures regard Kostas Sloukas and Sasha Vezenkov, who went to the NBA in Sacramento. They were replaced by Nigel Williams-Goss, who had played and won the EuroLeague final with Real Madrid, and by Luke Sikma, a power forward from Alba Berlin, a veteran of the competition. The third big addition is Nikola Milutinov, coming from CSKA Moscow, who had played for Olympiacos for years. However, Milutinov is fresh from the World Cup with Serbia and will also be rested. Georgios Bartzokas’ team still counts on Thomas Walkup, Giannoulis Larentzakis, Isaiah Caanan, Shaquielle McKissic, Kostas Papanikolau, Alec Peters, and Moustapha Fall.
The Olimpia trip is also an act of respect towards Vassilis Spanoulis, one of the greatest players of the latest generation of European stars, an opponent who has always been esteemed, respected, and obviously feared. “Spanoulis was an incredibly talented player who influenced a generation of athletes and fans across Europe with his creativity, clutch plays, and longevity. I never had the chance to coach him, but I experienced how difficult it was to coach against a player who was a nightmare for any coaches. And he was not only a great competitor and a winning player, but also a classy opponent and person,” said Coach Ettore Messina about a player who conquered the EuroLeague title three times and is one of only three players (the others are Nando De Colo and José Navarro) who have scored over 4,000 points in their career.
For Olimpia the two Athens games will therefore represent the final act of the preseason. Subsequently, just as Olympiacos will face Peristeri in the Greek Super Cup, Milan will play the Italian Super Cup by facing Virtus Bologna in the semi-final on 23 September in Brescia. Brescia and Tortona are the other two semi-finalists.
