Over the last five years, coach Ergin Ataman turned Anadolu Efes Istanbul into a continental force and the same tools that he used in doing so are exactly what made him so attractive to Panathinaikos Athens when it went looking for a new head of bench.
Ataman, 57, inherited a last-place team when he rejoined Efes in December 2017. The following season, he had the team playing for the EuroLeague crown.
So what is the magic formula that Ataman used with Efes? And can it work in Athens?
Ataman used three basic concepts to build a winner in Istanbul:
• Find underappreciated talents and build around them
• Coach the players in practice so that they feel confident to make decisions in games
• Make sure that the team works together and gives as much respect to the blue-collar players as it does to the scorers
Ataman built a backcourt for the ages by pairing Shane Larkin and Vasilije Micic together. Before he did so, neither was considered a top-tier player. Larkin had one good season in the EuroLeague with Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz in 2016-17. After that, he returned to the United States and played for the Boston Celtics in the NBA. Since he signed with Efes in 2018, he has scored the third most points (2,297) in the EuroLeague.
Micic reached the 2018 Final Four with Zalgiris Kaunas as a part-time starter. It was his third EuroLeague club and he was generally thought of as a role player. In fact, Ataman originally recruited Micic to Efes with the promise of being a role player. But he thought he saw something special in the player and once Micic was paired with Larkin, magic happened. He has scored the third most points (2,590) and dished the third most assists (862) in the league.
"Basketball is a simple game. How much you complicate the game will be more difficult for the players to show their potential in the game," Ataman told me last year.
“I never tell my players not to shoot, to not use an early fastbreak… I want them mentally to feel free on the court,” he explained. “This is my philosophy because I don't want that my players when they come to play on the court will think too much about what coach is asking from them. I like to teach them before, in practice, in the preseason.”
Indeed, the confidence that he instilled in his players was a big reason that Efes was able to win back-to-back crowns. And that came after his team was considered the clear favorite to take the 2020 crown before COVID-19 ended that season without a champion.
"It's important that everybody must understand his role and everybody must respect each other... because everybody knows that everybody needs to help his friends," Ataman said about teamwork. “Somebody must work more on defense, somebody will be more responsible to take the rebounds, somebody will be more responsible to play in the open court and fastbreak, somebody will control the game in the five-on-five, in the half-court, somebody must control the locker room of the team. When you build the team, you don't choose only the best players, you must think about everything."
Obviously, it's too early to predict what Panathinaikos will look like on opening night next season. But keep this in mind. Only four rotation players – Dogus Balbay, Bryant Dunston, Brock Motum and Kruno Simon – survived the purge to the Efes roster as Ataman headed into his first full season of the recent Efes golden era. And he is likely to have a completely revamped Panathinaikos roster built according to his plans when the 2023-24 season begins.
