Looked at purely from a basketball perspective, the signing of Kostas Sloukas by Panathinaikos Athens on Saturday was immediately one of the biggest moves of the summer. However, the fact that Sloukas abandoned Olympiacos Piraeus to join its cross-town archrivals made it an even bigger bombshell.
On the other hand, players moving between both sides of one of the most heated rivalries in sports is not all that rare. Sloukas will become the 25th Greek player to suit up for both clubs, while 10 high-profile foreign players have done the same. Most of those moves have come since 2000, too.
Sloukas's decision is striking, nonetheless, due to his status as a three-time Turkish Airlines EuroLeague champion who is still in his prime and his choice to take a straight-line route from one archrival to the other. Those two things make his situation comparable to just a handful of similar moves in the past, most notably the now-legendary Vassilis Spanoulis leaving the Greens for the Reds in 2010.
On the long list of Greek players who dressed for both teams, many – including names like Sofoklis Schortsanitis, Ioannis Bourousis, Nikos Oikonomou and Ian Vougioukas – took an indirect route to the second archrival, playing at least a year for another team prior to joining either Olympiacos or Panathinaikos. The list of those who took off one jersey to immediately put on the other is comparatively short.