Fourth Season Syndrome

The crisis at Maccabi Tel Aviv certainly reminds Yannis Sapropoulos of what happened in his last season at Olympiacos: he did not stop losing (especially in the derby) and was surprisingly eliminated from the Euroleague and the Cup.

Management had patience, and she fired the assistant and brought him a new guard, but the snowball did not stop until Blatt arrived.

Ahrela Weisberg

29/12/2021

Wednesday, December 29, 2021, 12:15 p.m.

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Basketball coaches have an expiration date, even if they are successful and successful, especially when they work in the most decorated and stressed clubs. For the past 30 years, David Blatt is the only one to have survived for at least four consecutive and full seasons at Maccabi Tel Aviv; Olympiacos (Yannis Juanidis), Barcelona (Xavi Pascual), Real Madrid (Pablo Lasso) and Panathinaikos (Zeljko Oberdovic) have also had just one such coach since the 1990s. In fact, the exception is CSKA Moscow - it had three that remained for long and continuous periods, without breaks and comebacks: Stanislav Jermyn, Ettore Messina and Dimitris Itudis.

There are many explanations, reasons and reasons for this phenomenon, some of which are repeated in different cases, and others are relevant only to specific situations. First and foremost, the coaches who fail or disappoint in their teams - usually do not survive until the fourth season, and usually leave their job much earlier. And why are those who have been so fortunate and their fate improved upon them, almost never receiving a permanent immunity statuette? It starts with personal extraction, goes through professional attrition and reaches up to relationships that have blossomed and then withered, and the bottom line is that it almost never changes. As it seems at the moment, whether he survives the current crisis or is fired soon, Yannis Sapropoulos will have a hard time continuing for a fifth season in office.

In many ways, although the situations are far from identical, Sapropoulos' fourth season in Tel Aviv is very reminiscent of his fourth and final season at Olympiacos, which eventually led to his replacement by David Blatt.

Will the Yellows treat him patiently and in a manner similar to the strategy adopted by their Greek counterparts?

And how will it end this time?

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To the full article

Olympiacos sided with Sapropolus, and did not touch him.

In the summer, David Blatt replaced him (Photo: Danny Maron)

The starting point

One thing is important to clarify, first of all: in Piraeus, Sapropoulos came to a ready-made and well-oiled team, which wanted well without him and the expectations from him were accordingly, but decided to fire a successful coach in the form of Yorgos Bratzokas;

In Tel Aviv, the situation was the opposite.

When he arrived, the Greek found a shattered club, seven defeats, dismissals of coaches and a change of players for three consecutive years, and rehabilitated it.

The successes

Sapropoulos' tenure at the Peace and Fraternity Hall opened with surprising success, when in his first season as coach of the Euroleague he marched his team to the final and in his first two years in office he won two Greek championships with it;

In his third season he returned with her to the European final, but lost to Real Madrid (and also surrendered to Pao in the playoff final).

But then came "Season Four Syndrome."

The summer before the storm

In the summer of 2017 there was a high turnover of foreigners at the Peace and Fraternity Hall: six left (Daniel Hackett, Eric Green, Dominic Waters, Matt Logsky, Patrick Young and Kam Birch), and six came in their place (Brian Roberts, Yannis Sterleniks, Hollis Thompson, Kyle Wilch R., Kim Tilly and Jamal McLean). In fact, Nikola Milutinov was the only foreigner left, and this was his breakout season. He upgraded at age 23 from 4.4 points and 3.3 rebounds in less than 13 minutes to a leading player who contributes 8.8 points and 5.7 rebounds in 21:42 minutes in the evening.

One important, central and essential thing has not changed - the dependence on the two local symbols, who were also the only ones in the team to score double figures: Vasilis Spanoulis (then 35) was still worth 14 points and 5.6 assists on average, and Yorgos Printzis contributed 12 points and 5.5 rebounds ; They were backed by Ioannis Papapatro, Venglis Mendzris and Costas Papanicolaou.

And it all happened during his breakout season.

Nikola Milutinov, the only foreigner left in 2018, in the Olympiacos uniform (Photo: Danny Maron)

The crisis

The crisis of Olympiacos in the 2017/18 season erupted at a later stage from the bad period that befalls him now.

Until then, at least from the outside, everything seemed to be going well.

The group shared the first place in the Euroleague with CSKA table, as both Abbas 4:12, and in a sense the crash came out of nowhere. It happened just after Ssfanolis staff returned late, due to an injury that kept him away the first two months of the season.

On January 12, the group was humiliated 86 54: Vitoria, in what turned out to be Sapropoulos' bitterest loss so far. They were defeated again, 82:54 by the Moscow Khimki, and then came the real low: a week later they lost within 48 hours to the Red Star Belgrade (89:78) and Panathinaikos in the league (68:61).

The shock

Sapropoulos' name did not appear in the Greek media as a candidate for dismissal, but the club realized it needed a shock and executed it in a somewhat bizarre way: Eternal Coach Assistant Christos Marmarinos (who currently coaches the Kosovo team and serves as the Sacramento Kings international scout) was sacked after a 14-year loss to Belgrade .

The Olympiacos management gave him backing, as befits a third-ranked team.

Sapropolus with Pini Gershon and Erez Edelstein (Photo: Official Website, Action Images)

The recovery - and the fall

With or without regard to the move, Olympiacos recovered (but only for a moment).

In the final rematch from the previous season, she defeated Oberdovic's Fenerbahce 70:95 and also came out of Madrid with a significant 79:80 victory over Real, with Printzis taking the reins and becoming the most dominant player in its ranks.

Shortly after the bizarre defeats, it seems the ground is ready for Sapropoulos' first win in the Greek Cup: in front of him stood in the final AEK Athens, who surprisingly ousted Panathinaikos.

But then the crisis broke out in Paul Volium with an 88:83 loss.

The reinforcement

The loss of the title also did not make the Olympiacos leaders doubt Safropoulos, at least not in the immediate term, and they had a good reason: unlike Maccabi Tel Aviv this season, the Greeks' place in the Euroleague quarterfinals was not questioned even for a moment.

In order to still improve positions ahead of the decisive moments of the season, the club came to the conclusion that they lacked firepower in the back line (with all due respect to the 14.4 points that rained down Roberts and Sterniks together).

The cliché about the difficulty of stars jumping halfway to a train that is already in travel again turned out to be true.

Less than a week after the loss to A.K. in the Cup final, former Euroleague king of baskets Bobby Brown was placed in Athens.

After three seasons in China and relentless transitions between the NBA and the Development League, he returned to Europe and did not really re-acclimatize (to say the least).

The American concluded his tenure at Olympiacos with nine appearances in the Euroleague, in which he scored 2.2 points, hit 2 of 20 for three and recorded a cumulative negative index.

Lost six times to Panathinaikos in one season, which is too much.

Olympiacos fans shower love on Sapropolos, in better days (Photo: Official Website, Action Images)

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The blow

The Reds finished their regular season in the Euroleague on the belly, with four losses in the last five games, but were ranked third, received in the quarter-finals series the poor Cinderella Zalgiris Kaunas, and were considered clear favorites to sweep it on the way to the final event in Belgrade.

But Sharonas Jasikevicius had other plans: the Lithuanians stole the home advantage already in the first game, and cruised to an exciting 1: 3 that lowered the screen on the glory days of Spanoulis at the Olympiacos.

The end

The relegation from the Euroleague had already turned Sapropolos into a "lame duck" who needed a miracle to survive in the role and reach a fifth season.

This miracle did not occur.

Although Olympiacos took the lead from Mapo in the first game of the Greek final series, immediately afterwards they lost it again and finally lost 3: 2.

For the first time in the days of Sapropoulos, the Reds were left empty-handed - with no championship or trophy, no ticket to the European Final Four, and with six derby losses in one season.

The Greek did not even receive an offer to extend his contract.

He finished his role in the summer, and the Reds embarked on a new journey with a new coach - David Blatt.

It did not exactly work out for them, and not necessarily because of the change on the lines: since they did not return to the playoffs in the Euroleague, they chose to relegate to the second division and therefore did not win any titles, and only today do they seem to be starting to recover.

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• Maccabi Tel Aviv in basketball

• Yannis Sapropoulos

• Olympiacos