GREECE - Eager to play as a team once more

After a disappointing fourth place at EuroBasket 2007, just one year after their astonishing victory over Team USA in the semi-finals of the 2006 FIBA World Championship, Panagiotis Yannakis and his squad earned their ticket for Beijing at home with a dominating performance in mid-July.

Greece's EuroBasket gold-medal winning heroes of 2005 and silver-medal stars of the 2006 FIBA World Championship are still hungry. They're eager to make the next step, which is to show what they can do at the Beijing Games. With home-court advantage at the Olympic indoor arena in Athens, a legendary-player-turned coach in Panagiotis Yannakis and a talented and very experienced team - the Greeks thrashed Lebanon, Brazil, New Zealand and Puerto Rico to claim one of the last three spots for the Olympics.

The list of great players in the Greek team is long. Dimitris Diamantidis, Theo Papaloukas and Vassilis Spanoulis will have leading roles as the guards but what about Nikos Zisis, who's coming off a strange season at CSKA Moscow? Before moving to the Russian capital last season to play alongside Papaloukas and for coaching great Ettore Messina, Zisis had been the go-to man at his teams. It had been that way since his 16th birthday. Whether it was with the cadets and junior national teams, AEK Athens or Benetton Treviso - Zisis had always been one of the most prominent players in the side. At CSKA, though, the best team in Europe, competition for minutes is fierce and regulations in Russia's Superleague require clubs to have a certain number of Russian players on the floor at all times. The depth of talent at CSKA, and the rules, all prevented Zisis from playing as much as he had grown accustomed to. It didn't prevent Zisis from have an important role at the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament, where he shone before a shoulder injury knocked him out of the semi-final against Puerto Rico early in the game.

As for Panathinaikos duo Diamantidis and Spanoulis and CSKA's Papaloukas, all three have been outstanding in their club careers. All three can score, defend, pass, run the fast break and provide spectacular plays. Diamantidis' speciality is defense while Spanoulis is best known for his penetration and Jump shooting. Papaloukas, as his 10 assists against Puerto Rico showed, is one of the best passers to ever don a Greece shirt.

Closer to the basket are the likes of Kostas Tsartsaris, Antonis Fotsis and Panagiotis Vassilopoulos. Each is a warrior in the paint but each has the ability to step outside and bury three-pointers. Of the three, Vassilopoulos showed he had made major strides this season when he played at the qualifying event. Defensively, he showed an ability to guard positions one through five although against the best centers in the world that might be asking too much. Then there are Olympiacos big men Yannis Bourousis and Sofoklis Schortsianitis, two players who can fill the paint for the Greek National Team. They are very different players, though.

Bouroussis is another who can step outside and score while also making a spectacular play on defense before finishing on the fast break. Man-mountain Schortsianitis is powerful but at the same time graceful. He combines strength with terrific low-post moves that gives opponents, including the United States in Greece's famous FIBA World Championship semi-final win in Japan, fits. The future is even brighter when one considers that American-born Konstantinos (Kostas) Koufos, the most valuable player of the U18 European Championship in Madrid last year, will one day represent the country. Drafted by the Utah Jazz this summer, Koufos elected to pass on an invitation to join the squad for the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament and instead focus on his rookie season in the NBA.

What are we to expect of this Greece team? After clinching a spot at the Beijing Games, they were drawn in Group A with the hosts China, world champions Spain, FIBA Africa winners, Angola, Germany and Team USA. "In order to be able to improve our performance day by day," Yannakis said, "we'll have to be ready to deal with the result, no matter if it is a win or a defeat." Might there be the slightest bit of anxiety ahead of the game against the United States, a rematch of the semi-final in Japan two years ago that the Greeks won? "The game against the USA is like any other game," Yannakis said.

How did they qualify?
EuroBasket 2007
4th, (5 W - 4 L)

Preliminary round
Sept-3rd 2007 Greece b. Israel 76-66
Sept-4th 2007 Greece b. Serbia 68-67
Sept-5th 2007 Russia b. Greece 61-53

Quarter-Final Round
Sept-20th 2007 Spain b. Greece 76-58
Sept-9th 2007 Greece b. Croatia 81-78
Sept-11th07 Greece b. Portugal 85-67

Quarterfinal
Sept-14th 2007 Greece b. Slovenia 63-62

Semi-final
Sept-15th 2007 Spain b. Greece 82-77

3rd place Final
Sept-16th 2007 Lithuania b. Greece 78-69