Undoubtedly, one of the top names that has ever sat on his bench Panathinaikou AKTOR it was his Rick Pitinowith the Hall Of Famer coach coming to our country in December 2018 after a long and successful career in the NBA and college basketball!
In a recent interview on the podcast, “Pardon My Take”, the 71-year-old American coach revealed including how made the decision to accept the proposal of the “greens” and to come to our country, despite the fact that he knew nothing about European basketball and the Euroleague!
In fact, he spoke about the two years he was a “clover” technician, stressing how he was wonderful experience which taught him a lot.
Rick Pitino’s statements in detail:
“A week before Christmas, a friend of mine called me and said, ‘Coach, I spoke with Chris Wallace, would you like to come to Panathinaikos to train?’ And I said: “what is this?”. He told me that he is in the EuroLeague, a famous team in Greece. They won six EuroLeague championships.
I said, “I’ve never been to Greece and I don’t know anything about the EuroLeague,” so I hung up. A week later he called me again and said “you have 48 hours to decide”. My wife said I should go. And I said to her “should I go to Greece?”. It was Christmas Eve, I had a flight to New York and I had to catch the flight, coach on Christmas night against CSKA Moscow. I said “ok, pack up and let’s go”. And he told me “you will pack, you will go, I WILL not come”.
So I left, we won the game against CSKA, I had two great first years, I became the Federal coach for a short time and I had a great time. I learned a different kind of basketball, it’s a different type of attack than what we’re used to and I learned a lot, it was great for me.”
Source: Sport Fm
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