The Greens center helped his team end an 11-year wait for a win at WiZink Center
Lethal Lessort helped Panathinaikos end pain in Spain
If you watch the top 10 plays of the week video clip after Round 27 comes to its conclusion, you might see a lot of Mathias Lessort.
In fact, you might only see Mathias Lessort.
The Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens center was a human highlight reel during his team’s stunning 86-97 victory over Real Madrid on Thursday night, producing dunk after dunk after dunk to silence the home fans and propel a memorable win.
In fact, it was truly memorable because it comes as the first success in Madrid that many Greens fans will remember at all, having last seen their team triumph in the Spanish capital as long ago as March 2013 and suffer 12 straight losses since then.
Using his past experiences to good effect
Even though he is only in his first season with the club, Lessort was well aware of that dismal road record against Real and appeared almost stunned at the end of the game as he reflected on the fact that Panathinaikos had actually finally ended its losing streak at the home of the reigning champions.
“I had PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder] when I came here, but we stayed strong,” he joked, with particular reference to his last trip to the WiZink Center. That came at the end of last season when Lessort represented Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade, which was defeated in Game 5 of a momentous playoff series despite leading 41-59 in the third quarter.
“Me and Ioan [Ioannis Papapetrou, who was also with Partizan last season] told the guys: it was the same situation here last year and we’ve got to learn from our mistakes. That's a big win, we know how hard it is to win against this team. They’re playing amazing right now and it’s great for us to come back after the break like that.”
Nobody made a bigger contribution to the victory than Lessort, who led his team by throwing down a remarkable total of eight dunks in his career-high tally of 26 points, also providing 7 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals and 1 blocked shot for a PIR of 33.
A poster dunk on Poirier
There were so many spectacular dunks to choose from, you could rewatch them all night without getting bored. But the pick of the bunch – narrowly edging out a ridiculous one-handed alley-oop – was a brutal hammer in the face of fellow Frenchman Vincent Poirier midway through the fourth quarter, while he also brought the game to a fitting conclusion by scoring the last basket with another runaway slam.
And Lessort admitted that hitting the hosts with rapid transitions was all part of the game plan, revealing: “We watched video and analyzed their strengths and weaknesses. In the first quarter we let them run a lot, we were rushing our shots a little.
“But we fixed that [in] the rest of the game. We were taking our time to read their coverage on defense, and we were the ones running at the end. That was the key.”
Nobody was running the floor as much as Lessort, and the results will be seen on this week’s highlight reels... again and again and again.