“I thought they made a mistake when they offered us James at Colossus – He had 5k a month”

About how the Mike James arrived in 2014 to become a player of Kolossos, with the impressive continuation that followed, the coach spoke Michalis Koutalianos on EEC Web Radio. He talked about how the American became a member of the Rhodes team and how he saw from a young age how high he could go. In detail, he talked about:

On how he “discovered” Mike James: “Colossos then had a normal and small budget for the category. It was my first time being called to be the first coach of Kolossos. Among the many players we were seeing, we had decided that we wanted a good American on our money, to give him the “keys” to the team, so that he would be the leader. We wanted to achieve an economic team, so that we could then use Angelos Tsamis and Christoforos Stefanidis. We had already acquired Larentzakis that year and Toliopoulos and we were looking for the leader of the team. Among the many emails, phone calls, lists, very late at midnight, I opened an email that Alexandros Katsaros had sent me and it contained the name of Mike James and his characteristics, along with various videos. As this was mid-August, James was anxious and looking for his chance. He was in Italy’s A2 last season. He and his manager were worried that he might end up without a team. One of the conditions his managers had set at the time was that there would be a buy-out in the contract only for a Euroleague team. It was also the mood of Colossus not to lose so easily a player he believed in so much.”

On what “attracted” him in the case of Mike James: “What impressed me in the cut highlights of James was the way he scored, he had repeated different clips with drives, with shots, he showed his athletic qualities mainly. What “attracted” me was his… audacity to nail in front of his opponents. It was 3-4 in the morning, I sent a message to the player’s manager and said, “Have you made a mistake and sent us this player? This player cannot be in the budget of Colossus. Surely there will be some mistake”. He was getting less than 5 thousand dollars a month. With that and that, the next day dawned, I texted my associates about the player and told them we need to close him…yesterday. I immediately got a “yes” from them and within 1-2 days this deal was closed”.

On whether Mike James was exactly what he was expected to be in the early days: “Mike came exactly as he really is. Relaxed, serious, that’s exactly what he is now. He liked Rhodes from the first moment. He had too much confidence in himself. He adapted immediately, like almost all the players of that period, to the obligations, despite all the difficulties and the games started. There we slowly discovered how he could perform so well and immediately, immediately take the racing part on his back and give us the possibility to manage him even better and take advantage of him. After the first 10 days of the preparation when the contact trainings started and we started and entered the 5 vs. 5, we were saying with my partners that when… he hits the turbo, you lose sight of him”.

On whether James is an NBA player: “All Americans have a dream to play in the NBA. To me, James had the ability to play in the NBA and have a regular role. However, his character and the fact that he would have to have a lot of patience to find his role and all this, while here he had passed and had already started to be a leading man, may have influenced his decisions. I believe it contributed to him being the star player in Europe. He was justified in his choice in my opinion.”