Never underestimate the heart of a champion, a phrase made famous by basketball's Rudy Tomjanovich, is usually applied to the last team to lift the trophy. But since he has been crowned a Turkish Airlines EuroLeague champion three times on two different teams in the last decade, there is no doubting the champion's heart of Kostas Sloukas.
Sloukas showed the heart of a champ
But doubt some people did recently, despite Olympiacos Piraeus enjoying its best season of the last four with Sloukas coming off the bench to rank first on the team in assists (4.3), second in PIR (13.7) and third in scoring (11.4 ppg). And they were likely going to doubt even more if after Sloukas missed his first 4 shots in overtime and committed a turnover as Olympiacos struggled to put away the true defending champions, Anadolu Efes Istanbul, at home on Thursday.
Those doubters were forgetting why Sloukas is who he is, a winner who shakes off adversity and is there at the end. He came to most people's attention with big shots like a buzzer-beater to force overtime on the road against Galatasaray in his first full EuroLeague season, which ended with him and Olympiacos as champions.
Almost exactly 10 years later, Sloukas on Thursday took a rebound with 8 seconds left and his team trailed 84-85 in overtime. He sped the length of the court and through the Efes defense to find Shaquille McKissic with a pass and then reposition himself in the corner. When the pass came back to him, with 2 seconds left, he had the presence of mind to pump-fake Adrien Moerman, who flew out of bounds, and send his shot up with 0.8 seconds left. The clock turned to zeros and the backboard lit up even before the ball hit nothing but net.
In other words, pure gold.
Sloukas finished the night with 23 points, 6 assists and a PIR of 23 – all team highs – and Olympiacos jumped into the lead for fourth place in the standings, which comes with home-court advantage in the playoffs, where the Reds are now 10-1 this season. He also spent 38 minutes on court in the absence of injured point guard Thomas Walkup as the Olympiacos defense held Efes stars Vasilije Micic and Shane Larkin to a combined 23 points, several below their average, despite each playing 35 minutes or more himself.
It was the second time this season Sloukas hit a game-winner at home, after he gave the Reds a 67-65 victory over his former team, Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul, in Round 7.
The coincidence of two buzzer-beaters against teams from the country where he won his last title, with Fenerbahce, caused a journalist to ask losing coach Ergin Ataman of Efes if Sloukas had learned to lead in Turkey.
"I think that the Turkish baklava that he ate before in Turkey gave him this chance to beat Turkish teams with on-the-buzzer shots," Ataman joked. "What can I say? Congratulations to him."