After an offseason rebuild and a slow start, Panathinaikos heads to Berlin in excellent form
The case for Panathinaikos: These Greens are peaking at the right time
A sign of a great team is turning a weakness into a strength. Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens has done that this season in becoming a candidate to go all the way.
The Greens finished the 2022-23 season in 17th place, which was unbecoming of the club’s storied history. A difference had to be made and it started on the bench. Panathinaikos lured Ergin Ataman in to become its new head coach and rebuilt the team from top to bottom.
Fourteen players from last season’s club left. The four who remained – Marius Grigonis, Panagiotis Kalaitzakis, Leftherios Mantzoukas and Alexandros Samontourov – accounted for just 12.9 percent of Panathinaikos’s scoring, 9.8% of its rebounding and 11.9% of its assists last season. That made for a lot of production to be made up.
Finding stars to fill the box score was never going to be a problem. Finding the players who could produce and come together as a winning unit was the challenge. And Coach Ataman was just the right man for the project.
Over the course of 34 regular-season rounds and a five-game playoff series, Ataman provided the blueprint and reenforced it with his undying confidence. Along the way, the roster turned itself from a group of men into a well-oiled machine. And in many ways, that growth is what makes Panathinaikos most dangerous because as we have seen, the Greens are still growing.
Panathinaikos lost two of its first three home games, including against archrival Olympiacos Piraeus on opening night. It still had a losing record after falling to Real Madrid in Round 13. That game was also the first time Kendrick Nunn, who debuted in Round 7, played more than 30 minutes or scored at least 20 points.
How much better was Panathinaikos over the second half of the season? It tied AS Monaco for the best record at 13-4.
That improvement can be seen in many places. Injured for most of the season, Ioannis Papapetrou more than quadrupled his scoring from his first 10 appearances of the season (2.7 points per game) in his last four playoff games (12.5 ppg.).
Kalaitzakis, who had not played more than 10 minutes in a game since early February, played a big role down the stretch in Game 5 of the playoffs against Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv.
And the more Coach Ataman relied on Nunn, the better he became. When Nunn played at least 30 minutes in a game, he shot 51.2% from downtown. When he played less than 30 minutes, he shot 29.9%.
Every team to reach the EuroLeague Semifinals has something special. And the numbers will show Panathinaikos to be an outstanding team on both ends of the floor. But what might just be the difference between the Greens and the rest of the teams in Berlin is that Coach Ataman has his boys still climbing to the peak of their collective abilities.
Panathinaikos is not coming to the Final Four too high or too low. The slug-it-out playoff series against Maccabi ensured that the Greens understand how hard they will have to work to defeat Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul. The way they played in the lead up to that series and at the end of Game 5 should remind them how great they can be.
And if this team is at its best when these next games tip, their opponents should be worried.