Vassilis Spanoulis – The ‘Goldfinger’

The evening was electric at Soccer City in Johannesburg on July 11, 2010. Spain and the Netherlands were competing for the first World Cup in their history during that final in South Africa, with Iniesta’s goal in the 116th minute of extra time making the score 1-0 and crowning the Spaniards world champions – the middle “crown” between their two Euro championships (2008,2012) for the greatest La Roja side of all time.

In sports departments at media outlets around Greece, the final was the first and only topic of discussion and at the peak of interest, but during halftime, things changed.

“Olympiacos BC announces its agreement with Vassilis Spanoulis. The international guard will be a player for our team for the next three years,” a brief press release read, confirming that the Angelopoulos brothers, the club’s owners, had achieved a colpo grosso of a transfer.
It was a basketball signing that took place in the midst of the World Cup final, and perhaps no one that night could have imagined the extent that this specific move would have on the history of Greek and European basketball.

Spanoulis made the big decision and became the team’s banner, the leader of Olympiacos and the player who managed to change everything by lifting the entire organization with his aura and talent.

‘The best choice’

Kill Bill himself overcame any reservations and took the risk, albeit a calculated one due to the size and history of the team where he was headed. He left an all-powerful Panathinaikos club – Olympiacos’ eternal rival – to begin a new chapter.

“It’s a new step in my career and the motivation for me is great. I wanted a change in my life and Olympiacos was the best choice. When Olympiacos showed me how much they wanted me, it crossed my mind, but this decision was certainly not easy at all and there will, of course, be difficulties, but I’m not afraid. Olympiacos approached me in the right way and that’s why I’m their player. I’m turning a page in my career and in my life and I hope my transfer will be the beginning of titles for my team. We don’t need to say more now. Eventually, I’ll speak up and everyone will know exactly what happened,” Spanoulis, who didn’t leave Panathinaikos as your average player, said at the time.

He departed even though the entire Panathinaikos organization (and coach Željko Obradović himself personally, who has never forgiven him) fervently wanted him to remain with the team.

Just a year earlier, Spanoulis, by far the best Panathinaikos player of all time, had been named the MVP in the Final Four in Berlin, playing alongside teammates that were themselves legends of European basketball, such as Dimitris Diamantidis and Šarūnas Jasikevičius, and yet Kill Bill had stood out above everyone in Panathinaikos’ course towards the European championship (2009). That final was possibly the most seesaw Final Four in European history, as both the Panathinaikos – Olympiacos semi-final and the Panathinaikos – CSKA final were decided in the last second.

A leader

A year later Spanoulis made the big decision and became the team’s banner, the leader of Olympiacos and the player who managed to change everything by lifting the entire organization with his aura and talent.

No other player in the history of Olympiacos, Greek or foreign, has influenced the team’s course to such a great extent and, in fact, so thoroughly. It’s not just the consecutive European championships, the domestic championships and the great victories. It was the complete change in mentality and philosophy that took place for the red-and-white club, along with the great contribution of top coaches such as Dusan Ivkovic, Giorgos Bartzokas and Giannis Sfairopoulos – coaches with whom Spanoulis worked brilliantly.

It was with tremendous self-confidence, hard work, dedication to the goal and an incredible athletic ego that transformed Vassilis Spanoulis from a good player into one of Europe’s top players of all time.

Spanoulis never hesitated at “clutch time”, such as taking the last shot and not just the shot. At the same time, he had the ability to read a game like few players and make the right decision, as with the pass of his career during the 2012 Euroleague final in Istanbul against CSKA, when he pulled all the opposing players towards him in the last play of the match and at the right moment passed to his best friend Giorgos Printezis. The latter got off his “signature” “hook jumpshot” into the bucket to give Olympiacos the European champion after 15 years.

A year later in London, he was left scoreless at halftime in the final against Real Madrid, but came out furiously in the second, scoring 22 points with five three-pointers, bombing the Spanish giant’s rim and leading Olympiacos to back-to-back titles, while putting up 100 points against the great Real team.

The epic of 2016

During the 2016 championship final, Spanoulis wrote his own unmatched epic tale, as he became the only player in the history of Greek basketball to have influenced an entire championship to such an extent. He scored two awesome three-point buzzer beaters (in an inconceivable déjà vu) that essentially gave his team the championship. The first came with Nick Calathes guarding him in the second final, and with Olympiacos’ backs against the wall if he missed – which would have allowed the Greens to make the series 2-0.

The next even bigger play came in front of his good friend and one of the top European defenders of all time, Dimitris Diamantidis, in the fourth game of the finals, ending the series and giving the Reds the title.

In the middle of the third game at the Peace and Friendship Stadium, and while Panathinaikos was preparing to break the home court advantage and take a 2-1 lead, Spanoulis, with 11 points out of 22 in total, in the last five minutes of the match turned a score of 59-66 into 71-66 and ended the match 77-72.

Spanoulis, who in every victorious, for his team, Final Four emerged as the MVP of the competition (in 2009 with Panathinaikos and in 2012 and 2013 with Olympiacos), experienced one Final Four that coincided with the birth of one of his six children – three sons and three daughters, enough for a team of his own.

What perhaps no one remembers about those finals is that Spanoulis in the third game had caused Calathes to foul out, while in the fourth game, playing with four fouls himself, he asked to stay in the game and made a decisive steal against James Feldeine to complete the comeback with a subsequent game-winning three-pointer.

“I thought, why not miss it, big Bill? You’ve sent us off two or three times.’ But he made it. It shows the quality he has and what a great player he is. The whole world understands it: his quality and his ability,” Diamantidis said at the time, during the last game of his career, and in reference to his good friend and fellow national team player.

Together they won the 2005 EuroBasket title and the silver medal at the 2006 World Basketball Championship in Japan, after having recorded an incomparable victory against the USA’s NBA-laden “Dream Team” in the semifinals.

Spanoulis’ tenure at the NBA, with the Houston Rockets, was brief, instead he rose to the top of European basketball.

Everything done with passion

He won three Euroleague titles (2009 with Panathinaikos, 2012 and 2013 with Olympiacos), 1 Intercontinental (2013 with Olympiacos), seven Greek Championships (2006, 2008, 2009, 2010 with Panathinaikos, 2012, 2015, 2016 with Olympiacos), four Greek Cups (2006, 2008, 2009 with Panathinaikos, 2011 with Olympiacos) and participated in the last three national team medals (gold at the 2005 EuroBasket, silver at the 2006 World Cup, bronze at the 2009 EuroBasket). He played in all with passion and has been doing the same as a coach over the last few years.

He announced his retirement on June 26, 2021, having completed 11 years with the greatest sporting love of his career, in the port’s Olympiacos, where he became a Legend.

Spanoulis changed the history not only of Olympiacos’ basketball but also of Greek and European basketball.