Beverley: “Sloukas was my teammate – Seats were broken, fans were throwing coins in Greece”

15 years ago, at the beginning of his career, Mr Pat Beverly was in Olympic and talked on his podcast about him Kostas Sloukaswho was MVP in the Final 4 of the Euroleague.

“We had 5-6 players who had won the Euroleague at Olympiakos back then. Slukas, now MVP, wasn’t playing at all back then. The same with me and Papanikolaou. We had to fight every day in training. We didn’t play at all, we just did hard training every day. He won the Euroleague, I also spoke with Nan, who won the title there. Panathinaikos won the Euroleague, I was in their big rival, Olympiakos. I’m glad that European basketball has a lot of lights on it now and a lot of people recognize it“, he emphasized.

“Our opponent was Panathinaikos. It had Diamantidis then and great players, some of whom are now coaches (s.s. Spanoulis, Yasikevicius). We couldn’t win and take the championship and the fans were smashing and throwing seats. You’d go up for shots and they’d put lasers in your eyes, they’d throw coins at you, they’d hit me in the head, they’d shoot flares, they’d tell me ‘don’t go there, they’ll spit on you’… Some of the craziest things you can see in basketball. You can’t understand, you have to experience it“, he added.

Finally, the veteran guard who closed the season for the Bucks this year made the comparison between the NBA and Europe. “Everyone in Europe wants to play in the NBA, because it is the best league in the world, but the gravity of every match in the Euroleague is great. In Europe we were fined for losing a regular season game. ‘But I didn’t even play coach, what 10%?’. I was supposed to get 60,000 bonuses in Ukraine, but I didn’t see them. They didn’t pay us. They owe me my bread. On some wins we were given a bonus in a small bag».