By: Freaknick/@euro_adventures
“You play…to win…the game”
-Herm Edwards
It seems strange that I even have to argue this, but here it goes: intentionally losing a game is wrong, in any context. That sounds simple enough, yes? But to many, this purposeful failure is an acknowledged part of the game and that doesn’t annoy them one bit. Fans actually defend its place in the sport, saying it’s tactical, wise, strategic. This is losing we’re talking about. This is gift wrapping a victory for your opponents in order to avoid another.
Coming into tonight’s game between Greece and Russia to determine second place in Group C, many believed the loser would find its way to the more desirable draw (ie: avoiding USA and Spain) in the next round and the tank talk cranked back up. Greece proceeded to put up an embarrassing display and came up four points short, 69-73. But this is about more than just one game today in Ankara; this is about putting a stop to the most ridiculous ‘tactic’ in sports.
Disrespectful to your opponents
After playing your ass for forty minutes—sweat, hustle, cuts and bruises—there’s no better feeling than knowing a victory made it all worth it. There aren’t many things that can get under your skin when you’re on that sort of high. Your opponent claiming they let you win is among the spare few. To insinuate that a win was not earned is a slap in the face. Sasha Kaun and Sergey Monya are professionals and I doubt they’re in the business of accepting handouts when fair competition is the alternative.
Russian Coach David Blatt summed it up best after the two teams played: “Greeks should be ashamed. What we saw was comedy, not basketball. Greeks shot to miss, on the other hand my players played with passion.”
Turkish Coach Bojan Tanjevic was a witness to the Greeks’ mockery of basketball and he let Ioannis Bourousis know after the game, clapping in his face and then telling him, “Congratualations, you did the same thing for the second consecutive year.” Bojan was referring to last year’s Eurobasket, where they again disgraced the competition by putting forth a halfhearted effort against France in last year’s Eurobasket. It seems that occasional apathy is quickly becoming commonplace among tournaments involving Greece.
*Update: Despite what Tanjevic implied, I have no proof of a tank job in last year’s Eurobasket. Although Greece did get the easier draw because of the win, it was a Nando de Colo buzzer beater from deep that won France the game. Also, many thought that France wasn’t putting their best foot forward against New Zealand yesterday, hoping for a loss by 11 or fewer. As I’ve said in the comments section, I was writing this piece up right after the Greece game ended. But as we saw with France, their tactics—if they indeed did tank—only ended up screwing them as well. It was all going fine until Thomas Abercrombie put it at 12 with a 3-pointer with :06 left. Proof again that karma doesn’t smile on the tanker: now France has Turkey in the next round. I stand by everything else in the article.
Your fans deserve better
All week long my left ear has been buzzing with the beautiful cacophony of Slovenian chants. From the moment their boys step on the floor for warm-ups until they hit the showers three hours later, 4,000 passionate individuals stand and pay tribute to the 12 men representing them on the floor. These folks flew 1,500 km to be here, and they’ll be damned if they’re going to take any of it sitting down, win or lose. They’ve been rewarded with an effort unsurpassed by another team here in Istanbul.
And though Goran Dragic and the guys are heading to the next round, a majority of the Slovenians have to fly home tomorrow to return to their jobs, their families, their lives in general. But even with second place locked up and facing a clearly inferior Iranian team, they arrived at Abdi Ipekci ready to give their fans a proper send off. And as Sani Becirovic told me after the game, it’s going to be a lot more difficult to win without their fans behind them. “They were our sixth player,” said Becirovic, “and they were carrying us through the whole tournament.”
Throwing a game would be no way to pay homage to the fans who make your lifestyle possible.
You will never be great
Wilt Chamberlain brought the best out of Bill Russell, Larry Bird brought the best out of Magic Johnson and the NBA Finals brought the best out of the Jordan-led Chicago Bulls. Great players and teams don’t become legendary for their conquests over mediocre competition, but for what they achieve at the highest level. Greece is jeopardizing their newly earned spot in international basketball’s upper echelon by seeking out easy opponents. Ironically enough, all of their jockeying left has left them with potentially the least desirable first two matches of anyone in the next round. In the first round you’ve got reigning World and European Champions, Spain. While the Pau-less Spaniards have two losses in the group stage, this is still a similar team to the one that beat them 82-64 in the semifinal of last summer’s Eurobasket semifinal in Katowice, Poland. A win there—which I wouldn’t count on—would leave them with the winner of the Serbia-Croatia game. From the five games I’ve seen them play here in Istanbul, I know that this Croatian team is good, but not Serbia good, and the Greece-Spain winner might end up with the Eurobasket runner-up who locked up first place in Group A with a win over Argentina. So is that the easy draw you were looking for? I didn’t think so. That’s what happens when you succeed at failing and then expect everything to align how you expected.
In the end, a loss is a loss. And that makes you a loser.
If Greece tried to lose, i will stay with the last bit that it backfired. And it wasn’t either the only team or the only match in which this happened today. Moreover the offended Russian coach tried to lose too but failed, which makes things even more ridiculous with his statements in the end. Everyone knew that we had weakness against zone defense, which is also his team’s preferred way of playing, (with every other team before playing zone for 40 minutes against us) yet against us he didn’t use that for a single minute. More pissed for failing losing actually than anything else.
There are ethics and then there is hypocrisy…. Finally if Greeks are losers sooner rather than later it will show up. So i can’t exactly see what’s the problem. It is quite possible that the next match against Spain we are out…
Shut the hell up with all this ridiculous Greek hatred. Let’s see how much crap you talk after Greece beats Spain.
I am Greek, I have been following the national team for more than 20 years and I am ashamed of their performance last night. There is just no way around it. However I don’t think that last night’s travesty had anything to do with the Eurobasket game against France. If Nando de Colo had not hit an impossible shot at the buzzer Greece would have won that game, regardless of their play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejjor_ab3Ec
@Everyone: I’ve made the appropriate changes based on your comments and what I feel to be the truth. As I wrote, I was writing this before the France game had even started, so apologies. Plus, the whole time leading up to this tournament everyone was fine with saying “if we don’t lose intentionally then…” or “we’ll win by ___ if we want to…,” so why is everyone getting so defensive now?
Well said,”Intentionally losing a game is wrong,…”.I wouldn’t like to defend their choice to apply “strategy” in advancing to the later stages of the championship. Why would people/media though single out Greece and talk trash about Greek basketball, intentionally ignoring that more teams have done the same (France, and why not even Spain)? It seems to me that there is some depressed hatred there. I wonder where that is derived from. I would find it more fair when people just were honest and straightforward with that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upcka8U6h0s&feature=player_embedded
Just see with your own eyes if Greeks tried to lose against France last year.Of course you don’t care you filled your lines.
They scored a 3-p from 7m.Are you crazy?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp4_qohHTuI&feature=related
What about these teams.They were tanking too??/?
And about Blat this lolguy was angry because he wanted to lose.
But he is your Messiah of ethics.As Kaslauskas said ”if he wanted to lose he could just tell us before”.
Tanjevic has entered the court and went to the Greek bench to insult players.Should he be there?No but you do not care , you are just using what he said to strengthen your point.Close the eyes to the attack to Bourousis.
And change your article’s title at least to Greek team no Greece-no need to offend one nation.Unless everyone can say USA and the art of doping and arrogance.
What about France???//??????
@Everyone: I might have been unfair to exclude France from this as well, but I started writing the article before that game even started. And about the “Greece hatred,” this is the second consecutive year they’ve done the same thing, just as Tanjevic said.
And as for “see how much crap I talk when Grece beats Spain,” let me reiterate what I said toward the end: if Greece wants to be considered as an international power—which they had been coming into this tournament—they really need to leave this sort of thing behind. They’re better than that.
that’s it with this blog for me, this is absolutely borderline.
Nick, you started caring about european basketball what? one year ago?
And now you say that greece is jeopardizing their newfound status in the upper echelon blablabla? Greece has been one of the better/best basketball teams for ages, actually longer than you probably know that anyone outside the usa plays basketball. They don’t jeopardize anything because some dude who has some half-knowledge about intl. ball talks some trash on his blog.
And this sort of “strategy” for better or worse, not on me to decide or you, is a cornerstone of international competitions in both soccer and basketball for ages. Everyone has been doing this for long, maybe you should lash out at Fiba and the format, like most serious writers do because the last people who like losing are actually the greeks, this is why this team was hell-bent on not getting spain and the usa without having won anything. We can deal with one of them, but both in line exhausts a team completely before even reaching the medal stages.
There is a difference between playing brave and being plain stupid and giving it away.
I propose you change your style, because unlike people like YArone Arbel and other really established european writers with deep knowledge of what’s going on you just don’t have the credibility to judge so harshly. Do this job for some years first and earn a readership for your professionalism before you delve into this kind of weak polarizing judgement just because it is an easy way to gain some attention from the average dumbass pseudo-brave reader who will yell at what is going on here but claps for NBA teams tanking whole seasons for a draft pick.
I used to read this stuff here, but seriously, it’s been too much with all this one-sidedness.
Ok we get it, you don’t like greece, you don’t like panathinaikos, you don’t like olympiacos and spain is great, serbia is great blablabla. I don’t see the big deal that makes you keep trying to wrap this up in objective basketball knowledge. Get over it, americano. You are losing readers and from an objective point of view you just appear to not be a credible source of opinions. Had you written this article about ALL the tanking teams and then turned it into a: “Fiba has to clean this up” thing, it would have been cool. But no, you just set out to bash greece, accuse them of tanking in a game they lost on a last second shot last year and just generally appear far too biased to be interesting.
Why do I even bother to write all this crap? Because I liked your mission to mix this blog a bit with BiE and Truehoop to get some more american attention to euro-ball, I even played in your stupid league. And with the occasional lapses like the ridiculous attempts at being funny with your raps I sometimnes found some interest in what you did. But man, seriously, there is only so much crap I will read before I stop trying to read this stuff and excusing you for not knowing this or that or the other thing.
I don’t need people to make me angry, I want to read people wh enjoy the different european schools of basketball and enjoy each one for its qualities and show understanding for traditions that have nothing to do with the gatorade highlight of the game or the Toyota dunk of the match or any of this commercialized crap you are used to. Just be a better writer, you can do it.
@Teo: You’re right: my international basketball knowledge is not where it needs to be, and I’m still new to this. But that’s part of what this site is: international basketball through new, American eyes. I write to learn more than I write to inform. I love the comments because—no matter how scathing they might be—I always learn something from them. I’m always forced to consider something I hadn’t before and I always try to respond individually to each one so that we can get a productive discourse going. And THIS IS A BLOG still; I’ve never claimed to be objective. If people want objective points of view they’ll go to Yahoo, they’ll go to ESPN, they’ll go the BBC or some other more reliable, resourceful organization with far more manpower and money to be everywhere at once. I’m not going to compete with them, so I simply watch, react, and write. And as for me hating Greek teams like you said, that’s just completely off base. I picked Olympiacos to win it this year and Panathinaikos the year before, so let’s keep that straight. I think Spain is better than Greece this year but that doesn’t make me anti-Greek. That’s the problem when taking sides because it’s not like pitting myself against one team or even one city like I’d do in America; it comes off as my dislike for an entire nation. That is not at all the case. The best part of doing this for me is the opportunity to see the world and learn more about the cultures, something which I—and Americans in general—generally lack. But if you feel like it’s a waste of time to read in the future, then that’s your call.
@Jorje: And that is a very good point about the zone approach, or lack thereof. Also, Greece outscored Russia in the fourth quarter, so I guess there’s that as well.
First of all I should note that for me losing a game intentionally is not bad. There is a system and a setup of the tournament that “allows” teams to choose. SInce FIBA is stupid enough to announce the structure of the tournament beforehand it is OBVIOUS that teams will look up for their interest. The fact that all teams that could benefit from a loss tried to lose: Greece , Russia (everyone seems to have discovered Greek team’s problem which is zone defence besides russians!!) and France, supports the fact that the problem is systemic. The most reasonable thing to do is to choose if you are given the chance!!!
now lets focus to the article. Without wanting to insult you (i dont even know who you are) it seems that you know nothing about intl basket or you just dont like Greece, which is perfectly fine as long as you clarify it. Greece is not a beggining team in Europe nor its club teams. Greece is one of the most succesful national teams worldwide, and its club teams are the most succesful in Europe. The fact that from the aforementioned 3 teams you put only Greece in the title (probably you could not think far enough to realise that Blatt was so pissed that he won to make it such a big deal) shows a probable empathy towards greece. Anyhow as you said quite correctly above this is a blog stating your opinion but now we realise your blog is biased.
P.S. check out how big is “tanking” in NBA not only for playoffs but even for draft selection and then come critise.
Cheers
@yiannis: Of course my blog is biased. Not against Greece, not against any country, but against concepts that I feel have no place in the highest levels of sport. I do know a thing or two about international basketball and losing intentionally is never something I will condone. I think it strikes at the heart of competition. Tanking for the playoffs is no longer an issue in the NBA because the NBA did away with the Divisional Winners getting the top seeds; now it’s solely based on record. And tanking for draft position happens in the NFL, but not necessarily in the NBA anymore. The team with the worst record rarely ever gets the top pick since the draft lottery has been implemented. And it’s less tanking and more playing your younger guys and resting your stars to protect your investment and develop your youth, similar to what Germany did yesterday giving Tibor Pleiss such big minutes.
I agree that the problem is largely an issue with the system. It should be a fixed side bracket, A vs. D, B vs. C, etc. Thanks for your comment.
What about Spain losing to France? Or wasn’t that intentional?
I don’t like my team fixing its fixtures but if it’s our only claim for some more fairness I can understand and accept it.
Oh, and by the way, this version of the Greek NT does not represent me at the slightest anymore. (Tsartsaris, Diamantidis, Fotsis, etc.. Maybe just Kazlauskas, Sfairopoulos and Bourousis) Just saying though..
About Greece’s national team being a new power……….
Back in the late 80s Greece had one of the best national teams in the world. Possibly even the best. Greece beat both Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in consecutive tournaments, something the United States didn’t do.
Greece also beat the Soviet Union in back to back tournaments. Again, something the United States didn’t do.
In fact, the United States switched to NBA players because they could no longer beat teams like the Soviet Union anymore at the Olympics. Those Soviet teams from that era with players like Arvydas Sabonis, Rimas Kurtinatis, Tiit Sokk, Alexander Volkov, Sarunas Marciulionis, Vladimir Tkachenko, Valdis Valters. A collection of some of the best European players of all time and with one of the all time great coaches in Alexander Gomelksy. In fact, the Soviet team that beat the US in 1988 and won the gold at the Olympics didn’t even have all of their best players.
For the NBA only oriented fans, 3 of those Soviet players played in the NBA and were successful players in the NBA. Volkov was a starter/regular rotation player, Sabonis was considered one of the best centers in the NBA, and Marciulionis was thought by many to be the best 6th man in the NBA. And all of those players I mentioned probably could have also played in the NBA. For example, most thought Kurtinatis was a better player than Volkov was.
And that Sabonis from that time, was better than the Sabonis that played in the NBA. The Sabonis that played in the NBA was even like a shell of the player that faced Greece in those days.
Well, just for the heads up, back in those days Greece was probably an even better team than the Soviet Union was. They beat them in the EuroBasket in both 1987 and 1989. The same Soviet team that beat the United States and won the 1988 Olympics, as I said, when not even all of their best players were playing. And even though the US was using college players then, look at some of those US players on that 1988 Olympic team:
Mitch Richmond
Charles Smith (Celtics, Wolves)
Bimbo Coles
Hersey Hawkins
Jeff Grayer
Charles Smith (Clippers, Knicks, Spurs)
Willy Anderson
Stacey Augmon
Dan Majerle
Danny Manning
David Robinson
Not exactly a scrub team. All 12 of them played in the NBA, and only one of them (Charles Smith – Celtics, Wolves) wasn’t a regular rotation player. Yeah, that US team finished third in the 1988 Olympics behind the Soviet and Yugoslav teams. The same Soviet and Yugoslav teams that Greece beat in the EuroBasket in the same era (1987-1989).
Greece beat the legendary Yugoslavia at the EuroBasket in 1987. That Yugoslav team had players like Drazen Petrovich, Toni Kukoc, Vlade Divac, Dino Radja, Zarko Paspalj, Stojan Vrankovic, and Sasha Dordevic, and was coached by the legendary Kresimir Cosic. That’s a team that had SEVEN NBA players on it. Some of them, considered amongst the best Europeans to ever play in the NBA.
Guys like Drazen Petrovich, Toni Kukoc, Vlade Divac, and Dino Radja. They were all considered to be very good NBA players. The NBA and USA Basketball even admitted that it was these teams of Yugoslavia and that Soviet team that caused them to start sending the NBA players to the national team competitions.
Once again, Greece beat these teams in the EuroBasket back in the 80s. For Greece back then, Panagiotis Fasoulas was considered to be one of the best European big men in that era. Fanis Christodoulou was considered to be one of the best combo forwards Europe has ever seen.
Panagiotis Giannakis was considered to be one of the best point guards to ever play in Europe. Nick Galis is considered by many to be THE greatest European basketball player that ever lived. Better than Pau Gasol, Dirk Nowitzki, Drazen Petrovich, Arvydas Sabonis. Many, many of the all time experts, legendary players, and best coaches of European basketball name Galis as the best European player ever.
So Greece is not a new basketball power. It has actually been one of the world’s biggest powers in basketball since the 80s. With the lone exception being the 1999-2001 era. Other than that 2 year period, Greece has been a major power in basketball for more than 2 decades. They are hardly a new basketball power at all.
Now i think the article is much more balanced.
@jorje: Thanks. Sorry for singling out Greece and assuming a little too much in the original.
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