The Panathinaikos coach casts a large shadow as his team heads to Game 5 against his beloved Efes
Ataman at the center as his ex and his new love clash
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11 Minute de lecture
In a league where the best head coaches can be as popular as the superstar players, no one stands out quite like Ergin Ataman. The Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens boss is certainly a divisive figure. He can be loud and controversial. He is beloved by fans of his teams and sometimes even despised by the opposition. And he is also what every team wants from their coach: a winner.
Three of the last four EuroLeague championships have Ataman's name next to them. The first two came with Anadolu Efes Istanbul in 2021 and 2022. In the summer of 2023, he joined Panathinaikos and led the Greens to glory in their first season together.
On Tuesday, Ataman and Panathinaikos will host Efes for the fifth and final game of what's been a thrilling series and only one of them will earn the right to keep playing.
While the links between Ataman and Efes are well known, when the series began they were part of the backstory. That changed in Game 4.
The Game 4 incident with Efes fans
Panathinaikos was clearly on its way to defeat late in Game 4. With 16 seconds left in the game, Ataman took offense when he heard the taunts of a small group of Efes. They were chanting a song that is usually associated with Efes's – and Ataman's – archrival Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul. Ataman reacted furiously, pointing and shouting toward the area in the stands where the singing was coming from before pointing again, this time towards the two championship banners in the rafters – the banners he helped bring to Efes.
He went on to shake the referees’ hands and proceeded to the locker room. He was not on the sidelines for the final seconds of the game, skipped the post-game television interview and did not attend the post-game press conference.
Assistant coach Christos Serelis, who represented Ataman at the press conference, said: "Coach Ataman doesn’t feel very well. He has a huge history with this club and big achievements and I think that he feels that some of the [fans], they don’t respect him a lot."
In the aftermath, players such as Panathinaikos forward Cedi Osman, who like Ataman has a past at Efes and has played under Ataman on the Turkish national team, and Efes forward Derek Willis publicly sided with Ataman. They expressed that he did not deserve such treatment from fans who experienced so much joy in great part thanks to him.
But there is also no running away from the fact that emotions got the best of Ataman. It could be argued that no loss during his coaching career left him feeling as defeated as he felt at the end of Game 4, when he heard jeers from fans who not too long ago were singing his praises.
The team Ataman did not want to play
To say that the charismatic Ataman has not had it easy the past two weeks is an understatement. On one side, his only goal is the success of Panathinaikos, which he guided to its seventh EuroLeague crown last season.
But on the other side is the club that he will forever be associated with and with which he won back-to-back EuroLeague championships.
The clash between Ataman's ex and his new love added spice to the series, but it was something the coach himself wanted no part of. Even before the playoff seeding were determined, Ataman said that Efes was the only team he did not want to see in the playoffs.
However, the basketball gods did not grant him his wish. And Ataman, who is often outspoken, before, during and after games, kept a relatively low profile, at least for his standards. Never one to shy away from big statements and guarantees, he has kept his tongue in check with thought-out statements that praised both teams and clubs.
Known for his occasional on-floor antics, where he is not afraid to put on a show and get into it with referees or with the opposing fans, Ataman has been unusually calm and collected.
Until the final minute of Game 4 on Friday night, that is, and him storming off to the locker room.
Efes's historic journey from worst to first
To understand Ataman’s emotions, one must know his deep history with the club, and his personal rivalry with Fenerbahce.
One-third of his three decades on the sidelines has been spent with Efes. Ataman has been the head coach of the club on three different occasions. The first time, for two seasons at the turn of the century, during which in 2000 he made Efes the first ever Turkish team to play at the EuroLeague Final Four.
His second stint with the club was between 2008 and 2010. The third one made history.
Ataman was in charge of Efes from December 2017 through June 2023. He took over a team sitting in last place in the EuroLeague and a year later created a monumental turnaround, taking the team to the 2019 championship game. Ataman’s Efes was dominating the league in the 2019-20 campaign before the competition was abruptly halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the games returned, Ataman guided Efes to back-to-back EuroLeague championships and was named the EuroLeague Coach of the Year in 2021, too. He turned Efes from a club that so often underachieved or came up just short into a EuroLeague powerhouse.
Even before his historic third stint with Efes, Ataman was an accomplished coach. In the EuroLeague, he led Montepaschi Siena to the 2003 Final Four and made history in other pan-European competitions by winning the 2002 FIBA Saporta Cup with Siena, the 2012 FIBA EuroChallenge Cup with Besiktas Istanbul and the EuroCup with Galatasaray Istanbul in 2016.
During his time at Galatasaray, Ataman developed a rivalry with the fans of its archrival Fenerbahce. It continued when he was in charge of Efes, and even as he took over as the head coach of the Turkish national team.
It is an unfortunate animosity that lasts to this day.
From hanging with friends to shouts from the stands
When Ataman left Efes in the summer of 2023 to take over Panathinaikos, it became clear over time that he maintained a great relationship with his former club. And, in the way only Ataman knows how to, he was never shy about voicing his opinions on the moves Efes made, despite being in charge of a rival EuroLeague side.
Among those, he critiqued the gesture of respect then-Efes coach Erdem Can made towards Zeljko Obradovic. Ataman then publicly approved the appointment of Tomislav Mijatovic as Efes's next head coaching hire.
Panathinaikos and Efes spent parts of their training camp together last summer, and Ataman was happy to post a photo of all enjoying a cup of coffee, with the caption “Waiting for you guys in 2024-25 EuroLeague final”. Mijatovic was in the meantime replaced by Luca Banchi, but still serves as the first assistant on the team.
In another show of their great relationship, Efes was invited to the open-air tournament in Athens at Panathenaic Stadium last August.
The way Ataman treats his former club also showed through his guest appearance on the Off The RECourt Podcast, hosted by Efes's star guards Shane Larkin and Elijah Bryant. Ataman opened up about a number of topics there, which is rare to see between a coach and players from another team.
Fast-forward to the EuroLeague Playoffs, and Ataman’s approach did not change a bit.
“I have great respect for Efes,” Ataman said on the eve of this best-of-five series. “Many players are my players, and we made history in European basketball. But now we are on separate ends, and I will do everything on the court to send my team to the Final Four.”
A few days later, despite losing Game 2 at home and with tensions running high, Ataman tried to be a voice of calm, calling things “fair”, “balanced”, saying he was and looking forward to the continuation of the series.
Even ahead of Game 3, he referred to his opponents as “friends”, once again reiterating his feelings about the playoff opponent at hand.
The flame has been lit on a Game 5 that promises fireworks
So, when Efes fans started taunting him at the end of Game 4, it was a little unexpected. And it obviously shocked Ataman, too.
What it also did was add more fuel to an already fiery series, with the outcomes of each game historically tight.
On one side is the defending champs, led by the reigning MVP Kendrick Nunn and four-time champion Kostas Sloukas, who both joined the Greens under Ataman.
On the other, it's the last team to win back-to-back championships, led by Larkin, a player who became a superstar under Ataman.
And in the middle of it all stands Ataman himself.
The series now goes back to Athens for Game 5, which was sold out in about four hours. Who knows? Years from now we might simply remember it as the ‘Ataman series’.
But regardless of how things play out on Tuesday night, or how we end up calling it, this series is certain to go down as one of the best we have ever witnessed. And Coach Ataman is a big reason why.