Sasha Vezenkov and Kendrick Nunn go head to head at SEF
Olympiacos vs. Panathinaikos: Will the real MVP please stand up?
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Regular Season
Round 29 of 34
Group Regular Season
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Eminem asked “Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?” in his hit song “The Real Slim Shady” in 2000, but looking at the 2024-25 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague season, a similar question could be posed in the lead-up to Friday’s Greek derby: Will the real MVP please stand up?
This will be the 23rd time that Olympiacos Piraeus and Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens have locked horns in the EuroLeague this century, and most of the focus surrounding this clash of titans has surrounded the two teams’ MVP candidates, Sasha Vezenkov and Kendrick Nunn.
Vezenkov, the 2022-23 EuroLeague MVP and this season’s MVP of the Month for January, has picked up where he left off when he was last in the EuroLeague, ranking first in PIR (24.5), second in scoring (20.1 PPG) and seventh in rebounds (6.3). His play on the court has been integral in Olympiacos becoming the first team to qualify for the postseason as the Reds boast a league-best 21-7 record.
Nunn, on the other hand, secured his first MVP of the Month award in February and is averaging a league-best 20.6 points per game. Particularly with fellow star Mathias Lessort having gone down with a fibula fracture in Round 17, Nunn has taken his game to another level to guide Panathinaikos to an 18-10 record and third place in the league.
It would be normal for the two stars of Greece’s two giant clubs to be at each other’s throats, but instead there is a mutual appreciation and respect.
“He’s a great player and, most importantly, he’s a great person,” Nunn said of Vezenkov. “Just the little time of knowing him and just watching him play, what he does is amazing. He’s unique and nobody does it like he does, to be honest. He’s very effective without being ball dominant, which is pretty rare in basketball. Not a lot of guys can do it.”
Likewise, Vezenkov only had kind words to say about Panathinaikos’s electric scorer.
“I said it multiple times, he’s a great player and great person,” the Olympiacos star said of Nunn. “I won the award, too, but in February it was his turn. We have to focus and we know they’re coming for us on Friday. They won the [Greek] Cup, so we need this game.”
Olympiacos and Panathinaikos each come into Friday’s derby on winning streaks, with the Reds having won five straight games while the Greens have chained together four victories, and a big performance by Vezenkov or Nunn in a triumphant effort could go some way towards determining the Regular Season MVP.
There has been a celebratory atmosphere at Olympiacos of late, not only because of the team’s winning performances – coach Georgios Bartzokas’s men have won 12 of their last 13 games – but because of the club celebrating its 100th anniversary. Hopes are sky-high for the Reds this season, with Vezenkov and fellow star signing Evan Fournier determined to bring a fourth EuroLeague championship to Piraeus and end the club’s 12-year wait to wear Europe’s crown.
Nunn and Panathinaikos know what it takes to do just that, as they showed last year, and an eighth star is all that anyone is thinking about in Athens. First, though, the Greens know they can take another big step forward towards securing home-court advantage in the playoffs with a victory at SEF on Friday.
To do that, Panathinaikos will need to put some demons to bed having lost seven straight EuroLeague games against Olympiacos. The last time the Greens downed the Reds was on February 5, 2021, as they came away with a 77-88 win at SEF. Both clubs were in transition at that time, but they enter this latest Greek derby as the two favorite teams to lift the EuroLeague title in May.
Not much separates the two teams, so the play of the two teams’ MVP candidates could go some way towards determining the final outcome. Will the real MVP please stand up?