The Turkish tactician has separated himself from the pack by winning three EuroLeague crowns in the past four years. How does he do it?
The magic of Ergin Ataman
Articolo
8 Minuto di lettura
What Ergin Ataman did this season with Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens is almost unprecedented. He took a team that finished 17th in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague last season and guided it to the championship in the space of just one year. Great praise was deservedly heaped on Coach Ataman after Sunday’s come-from-behind win over Real Madrid.
Sitting courtside for the games, Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo told Ataman after the final: "You are the No. 1 coach, the best. I would love to play for a coach like you."
Panathinaikos guard Marius Grigonis gushed to the Lithuanian media about Ataman after the final, too. "I have no idea what he's doing, but he's creating miracles," he said. "Incredible. Everyone wrote us off. He makes miracles, it's not for my head to understand. I'm too stupid to understand, he just goes and wins titles."
Final Four MVP Kostas Sloukas also credited Ataman in the post-game press conference in Berlin: “He’s the main reason why I’m over here in Panathinaikos. He was the first guy who believed in the dream, and now we have shown everyone what was the dream – the championship.”
What is Ataman’s magic recipe?
There are a few rules to the Ataman system that he shared in a 2022 interview shortly before he led Anadolu Efes Istanbul to a second consecutive championship. Aside from his basic coaching principles, which focus on player movement to maximize spacing on offense and tough individual and team defense, the coach believes in giving the players the confidence and freedom to operate on the court.
"Ataman has a very specific approach for a game which is completely to relax the team," Vasilije Micic, who was named the 2021 EuroLeague MVP while playing for Ataman, said before Sunday’s game. “That’s how we played for him and I think that is very efficient.”
Sloukas called the Turkish tactician the “leader of the team” at Sunday’s post-game press conference.
“He trusts the players. He knows what they can do on the court. And he leaves them the space and the time to do it,” Sloukas said before going into specific examples.
“I know he trusts me. He left me in the game. I didn’t have a good semifinal. We spoke yesterday and we said I am going to be better and we are going to win. He knows what I can do. He knows what Kendrick Nunn can do. And all players. You saw how he trusted [Nunn] today because he had 3 fouls. He kept him [on the bench] and he put him exactly at the moment we needed him and he scored big buckets. And finally, we succeeded in a great victory. I want to say thank you to [Coach Ataman] because I believe without him we could not do anything.”
What his big statements show
As part of relaxing the team, Ataman regularly makes bombastic statements. This season, he said he would take Panathinaikos to the Final Four from the moment he was handed the reins. And he doubled down after the Greens lost Game 1 of the playoffs at home against Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv.
“I made a promise to all the people here that we will go to the Final Four. And my promise is that. Nothing important, it’s 0-1. We will go to the Final Four. If we don’t go to the Final Four, I won’t be with Panathinaikos next year,” Ataman stated.
In doing so, he shows confidence in his players, while also taking some pressure off them. His bold talk makes Ataman a magnet for the media and allows his players to relax and watch. Reporters looking for a good quote will chase Ataman before they come to Mathias Lessort, Kendrick Nunn or Sloukas.
Then there is team chemistry. “It's important that everybody must understand his role and everybody must respect each other,” Ataman said in that 2022 interview.
And throughout the lengthy season, with domestic competitions and EuroLeague travel, Ataman makes sure that his team functions well together and that they all buy into their roles so that the unit is ready for the big moments. That could be seen in the playoffs and the Final Four as the likes of Panagiotis Kalaitzakis, Luca Vildoza and Kostas Antetokounmpo all made key contributions in limited minutes.
The reason that Coach Ataman’s feat this season is “almost unprecedented” is that Ataman came very close to doing the exact same thing in the past. Efes hired Ataman midway through the 2017-18 campaign, in which they finished dead last. A year later, Efes was in the championship game.
And what came after that? Efes in 2019-20 was looking like a world-beater, leading the standings by two wins before the season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps there is now room for great excitement next season among fans of the Greens as their beloved club tries to go back-to-back.