The hypocrisy of people in, out and around Greek basketball has reached new heights last evening during the Games of Week 1. Some persons and institutions must answer for their irresponsible actions and behaviour.
Hypocrites #1: The clubs. Especially the big ones. The ones who created and continuously finance since then, armies of professional hooligans who step in when things do not go as planned for their beloved teams and bosses, destroying public and private property, attacking civilians, police and opponent players.
Hypocrites #2: The Greek Basketball Federation: The one who is “democratically” ran under the same leadership for the past thirty years. Which threatens players who dare to disagree with them into an international retirement, which lacks vision to take Greek basketball to the next level, which gives in into government apathy regarding violence in basketball and in sports in general.
Hypocrites #3: The multi-millionaire players. Multi-millionaires Ioannis Bourousis, Kostas Tsartsaris and Demetris Diamantides who were elected by the players to represent THEIR INTERESTS and unite their voices with the ones of the “smaller fish”. Instead they chose the path of money, giving in to threats and pressure and cowardliness acting as modern day Ephialtes leading the enemies to the gates of Thermopylae.
Ioannis Bouroussis especially has a lot of explaining to do to his colleagues. He was elected vice-president of the players union. He then proceeded to ignore the overwhelming 89.5% of them who voted for a strike. Who shamelessly spat in the faces of his fellow players of Aris who sat out of the game letting their team play with just foreigners and youth players while the Euroleague giant Olympiacos played with a full roster. Of course the same goes for Panathinaikos players. The mere fact that they used the fact that Olympiacos chose to ignore the strike and go ahead and play, as an excuse only makes them more despicable.
Shame on Olympiacos players who when confronted by the ones of Aris asked them “who will give us our 170K monthly wages euros in case the club punishes us for not playing”. Shame on Panathinaikos Greek players who stated that they regret playing against a 5-men PAOK, but still went ahead and did it.
Of course one could hardly expect a better behaviour from some of the aforementioned persons, who some years ago dismissed Lazaros Papadopoulos idea to use a part of their bonus from the Greek National Team to pay for the insurance of their under-privileged colleagues of the second division A2.
Hypocrites #3: Greek Police. The same that allows violence ruling Greek basketball and all sports in general, who never arrest or use force against hooligans, who never use the CCTV of each arena to identify and arrest people whose actions are outside the law. The same that stand just a few steps away just watching hordes of hooligans abusing professional players and coaches, are used as a pawn in the hands of the might, rich and strong to bully players who are on legal strike to take them out of the court.
So hypocrite in fact that they were afraid of the boos by 200 fans in OAKA to arrest Players Union’s president Lazaros Papadopoulos, instead they waited for him at the Airport with a fake accusation by a Riot Police member that he verbally and physically assaulted him in OAKA some hours ago.
TalkBasket is holding the aforementioned four parties as the main responsible ones to anything happens to Greek basketball from now on. You shall find us against you at each step. We would also like to offer our strongest salutes and support to Lazaros Papadopoulos and the rest of the PSAK guys who stand by their choices, values and fight for better days in Greek Basketball.
If you want to talk to us about this feel free to contact us on Twitter @TalkBasket
