In order to get into the spirit for the final, I passed by Panathinaikos's venerable (i.e. decrepit) stadium in Ambelokipi to check out the graffiti on its walls, which is pretty cool. Here are a couple of the pieces: 
Then, once more to OAKA, this time for the much-anticipated final between Panathinaikos (PAO) and CSKA Moscow, the two best teams in Europe, which seemed destined to meet for the title. Outside OAKA, having gotten there somewhat early to catch the 3rd place game (the NCAA should reinstate the 3rd place game, I think - the teams and fans are already there, might as well give them one more game), I noticed a huge mob of PAO fans milling about outside the stadium, as well as plenty of popos. Knowing that scalping outside the stadium was not all that prevalent, I wondered what was going on. Well, come to find out that PAO fans from all around the city had descended upon OAKA to try to sneak into the game. When they saw they had a critical mass, they formulated an ad hoc plan to just bumrush the stadium, on the theory that the police couldn't stop them all. Having caught wind of this, the riot police came out in force, and the resulting stalemate was what I saw. All righty then.
In any event, obviously many did manage to sneak in, because the place was jam packed. Whereas at the semis, the aisles were commandeered by some of the more hardcore fans (and me, of course), now they were fully stuffed, so that you'd have to be a bushwhacker to go to the bathroom. Of course, my buddies from the semifinals, perhaps superstitious, had saved my spot in the same aisle as on Friday, so I was all set.
Then, once more to OAKA, this time for the much-anticipated final between Panathinaikos (PAO) and CSKA Moscow, the two best teams in Europe, which seemed destined to meet for the title. Outside OAKA, having gotten there somewhat early to catch the 3rd place game (the NCAA should reinstate the 3rd place game, I think - the teams and fans are already there, might as well give them one more game), I noticed a huge mob of PAO fans milling about outside the stadium, as well as plenty of popos. Knowing that scalping outside the stadium was not all that prevalent, I wondered what was going on. Well, come to find out that PAO fans from all around the city had descended upon OAKA to try to sneak into the game. When they saw they had a critical mass, they formulated an ad hoc plan to just bumrush the stadium, on the theory that the police couldn't stop them all. Having caught wind of this, the riot police came out in force, and the resulting stalemate was what I saw. All righty then.
In any event, obviously many did manage to sneak in, because the place was jam packed. Whereas at the semis, the aisles were commandeered by some of the more hardcore fans (and me, of course), now they were fully stuffed, so that you'd have to be a bushwhacker to go to the bathroom. Of course, my buddies from the semifinals, perhaps superstitious, had saved my spot in the same aisle as on Friday, so I was all set.
The fans go bananas as Panathinaikos hits the floor. The banner with the picture on it on the left is a photo of the dude who got stabbed up in the scrap prior to the women's volleyball game with Olympiakos.
These are people sitting in the aisles before the game, not in seats. Good luck making it to the bathroom if you get the runs.
This situation led the French sports daily L'Equipe to comment, the next day, of the palpable air of lawlessness at OAKA - an esprit of anything goes. On a similar note, OAKA mimics the old Boston Garden, the way you hear it described in the 50's, in that everyone in the joint is smoking, and there is a blue cigarette haze that hangs over the stadium. Must be fun to play in that.
The 3rd place game was entertaining, and a preview of things to come. Unicaja pulled off the upset over Tau in the Spanish internecine battle behind a last second layup by Marcus Brown, a former Murray State Racer. Tau's Scola and Splitter, freed from PAO's defensive shackles, bounced back with strong games, but it wasn't enough. As an aside, Zoran Planinic, formerly of the Nets, had a decent game, and then was walking around in our section all cocky with his ladyfriend, who was a smokeshow. This is the same fool Fly Ty and I used to see at Suede a few years back hanging around with Richard Jefferson as if he were his mentally slow little brother, with girls paying more attention to MTV's Quudus than to him. I'd say he made the right decision to return to Europe . . . although maybe not the right decision to strut around the stands, since the crowd was not reticent about expressing their admiration for his girl, in no uncertain terms, in front of him.
But really everyone was impatient to just get to the main event.
The crowd, with OAKA overstuffed, was even louder than on Friday. Here are some youtube clips, although they don't really do the experience justice, because they don't fully capture the fact that the entire stadium was going ballistic in unison.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcDOh9mnJ48&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XJNu7Zn5fI&mode=related&search= (after the game, the first chant is the crowd's favorite. Translated: "It's a magic plant, give me some to ingest, to dream of my PAO, and scream to the heavens: my Panatha, I love you, like heroin or a hard drug; like hashish, or LSD, for you, PAO, the whole world fiends." What, you were expecting a children's nursery rhyme?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNcTw6nQZ5o (after the game)
The game, although foul-plagued, lived up to its billing. Actually, beyond its billing, since it had been expected that PAO would slow it down into a defensive battle, but instead they opened it up. Dimitris Diamantidis, the 3-time Euroleague defensive player of the year, due to his octopus like tendrils for arms, was everywhere. In the second half, former Sun Devil Mike Batiste - the player that Mike Sweetney could have been if Sweets didn't insist on making every meal like Bluto Blutarski in the Faber cafeteria - came alive in the second half and put in work in the low post. On the CSKA side, a big mule of a power forward named Smodis played well, but the real story was Theo Papaloukas, who was the best player on the floor and single-handedly was keeping CSKA in it at times.
Tempers flared, on occasion, with even a punch to the crotch in evidence. And it was here that I parted spiritual ways with my fellow Panathinaikos fans. They targeted Papaloukas (who was the recipient of the slap to the bozack, not the provider) viciously, belting out "PAPALOUKAS, SON OF A WHORE, SON OF A WHORE." This was not a few fans, but just about the entire stadium, rhythmically chanting out their perspective on Papaloukas's moms. Mind you, this guy is a Greek athletic hero, the same player who led the Greek national team to the European championship in 2005 and to victory against the U.S. in last summer's world championships. And not only did this continue throughout the game, but even after the hostilities were over, postgame. I generally appreciated the venom of the crowd and my newfound buddies, but not in this instance. As draftexpress.com put it:
"One of the best basketball experiences anyone can enjoy is to attend a game in an arena packed with hardcore Greek fans. The volume, aggressiveness, repertoire and coordination in their chants leave you with goosebumps whenever they reach full strength. The dark side of this amazing spectacle includes no respect for the opponents and violent behaviour. Actually Papaloukas, who was gifted with some of the worst words you can possibly imagine dedicated to him and his family, had a brawl with a Greek fan who went after him in the mixed area. The post-game celebration, in Omonia square, had to be dissolved by the police with tear gas when the fans started burning things."
http://www.draftexpress.com/blogs.php?blogid=4
Aspersions as to Theo's mama aside, the game went down to the wire when Trajan Langdon, instead of providing his customary championship stumble-and-cough-up-the-ball a la 1999, hit a couple of dagger 3s to bring CSKA to the brink. But a tough Batiste post-up move gave PAO a lead it wouldn't relinquish, and after a series of clutch free throws the Clover emerged victorious, 93-91 in what was immediately hailed as the best Euroleague title game of all time.
The 3rd place game was entertaining, and a preview of things to come. Unicaja pulled off the upset over Tau in the Spanish internecine battle behind a last second layup by Marcus Brown, a former Murray State Racer. Tau's Scola and Splitter, freed from PAO's defensive shackles, bounced back with strong games, but it wasn't enough. As an aside, Zoran Planinic, formerly of the Nets, had a decent game, and then was walking around in our section all cocky with his ladyfriend, who was a smokeshow. This is the same fool Fly Ty and I used to see at Suede a few years back hanging around with Richard Jefferson as if he were his mentally slow little brother, with girls paying more attention to MTV's Quudus than to him. I'd say he made the right decision to return to Europe . . . although maybe not the right decision to strut around the stands, since the crowd was not reticent about expressing their admiration for his girl, in no uncertain terms, in front of him.
But really everyone was impatient to just get to the main event.
The crowd, with OAKA overstuffed, was even louder than on Friday. Here are some youtube clips, although they don't really do the experience justice, because they don't fully capture the fact that the entire stadium was going ballistic in unison.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcDOh9mnJ48&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XJNu7Zn5fI&mode=related&search= (after the game, the first chant is the crowd's favorite. Translated: "It's a magic plant, give me some to ingest, to dream of my PAO, and scream to the heavens: my Panatha, I love you, like heroin or a hard drug; like hashish, or LSD, for you, PAO, the whole world fiends." What, you were expecting a children's nursery rhyme?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNcTw6nQZ5o (after the game)
The game, although foul-plagued, lived up to its billing. Actually, beyond its billing, since it had been expected that PAO would slow it down into a defensive battle, but instead they opened it up. Dimitris Diamantidis, the 3-time Euroleague defensive player of the year, due to his octopus like tendrils for arms, was everywhere. In the second half, former Sun Devil Mike Batiste - the player that Mike Sweetney could have been if Sweets didn't insist on making every meal like Bluto Blutarski in the Faber cafeteria - came alive in the second half and put in work in the low post. On the CSKA side, a big mule of a power forward named Smodis played well, but the real story was Theo Papaloukas, who was the best player on the floor and single-handedly was keeping CSKA in it at times.
Tempers flared, on occasion, with even a punch to the crotch in evidence. And it was here that I parted spiritual ways with my fellow Panathinaikos fans. They targeted Papaloukas (who was the recipient of the slap to the bozack, not the provider) viciously, belting out "PAPALOUKAS, SON OF A WHORE, SON OF A WHORE." This was not a few fans, but just about the entire stadium, rhythmically chanting out their perspective on Papaloukas's moms. Mind you, this guy is a Greek athletic hero, the same player who led the Greek national team to the European championship in 2005 and to victory against the U.S. in last summer's world championships. And not only did this continue throughout the game, but even after the hostilities were over, postgame. I generally appreciated the venom of the crowd and my newfound buddies, but not in this instance. As draftexpress.com put it:
"One of the best basketball experiences anyone can enjoy is to attend a game in an arena packed with hardcore Greek fans. The volume, aggressiveness, repertoire and coordination in their chants leave you with goosebumps whenever they reach full strength. The dark side of this amazing spectacle includes no respect for the opponents and violent behaviour. Actually Papaloukas, who was gifted with some of the worst words you can possibly imagine dedicated to him and his family, had a brawl with a Greek fan who went after him in the mixed area. The post-game celebration, in Omonia square, had to be dissolved by the police with tear gas when the fans started burning things."
http://www.draftexpress.com/blogs.php?blogid=4
Aspersions as to Theo's mama aside, the game went down to the wire when Trajan Langdon, instead of providing his customary championship stumble-and-cough-up-the-ball a la 1999, hit a couple of dagger 3s to bring CSKA to the brink. But a tough Batiste post-up move gave PAO a lead it wouldn't relinquish, and after a series of clutch free throws the Clover emerged victorious, 93-91 in what was immediately hailed as the best Euroleague title game of all time.
PAO cuts down the strings, with riot police at the ready as flares go off in the crowd.
The fans, needless to say, were delirious. After the post-game celebrations in the stadium, the revelry continued through the night, although unfortunately my flight back to the U.S. the next day prohibited me from proceeding to Omonia Square to burn a car or two.
Maybe next time.
Maybe next time.
1 comment:
Hello. This post is likeable, and your blog is very interesting, congratulations :-). I will add in my blogroll =). If possible gives a last there on my blog, it is about the Smartphone, I hope you enjoy. The address is http://smartphone-brasil.blogspot.com. A hug.
Post a Comment