A Brief History of PAOK Basketball
Dedications-Introduction-Acknowledgements
Notes-Disclaimers-Requests
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# This work is dedicated to: #
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# Louisa Avgoustiniatou for everything #
# Panos Fasoulas for making me a basketball fan #
# Herodotus for being the first and the best #
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# and #
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# all the good PAOK basketball fans for being such #
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Putting together this document I have used a mixture of information collected
from various sources, including personal communications, watching games live or
on video, and reading journals (Triponto) and newspapers (Thessaloniki,
Makethonia, Sports tou Vorra, Ethnikos Kirix, Eptaimero tou Basket, and others).
Living in the US since 1988, my recent direct contact with Greek basketball has
been naturally limited. This may be reflected in the irregular or even biased
extent of coverage of different games and events and, probably in errors or
omissions. It is also likely that my previous experience from the 1979-1988
period has unduly weighed in my personal interpretations and judgements included
in this text. So it's quite possible that some of my comments may not represent
fairly the facts, and, therefore, should be taken just for what they are:
personal opinions. I have tried to give more weight to long-time contributions
and rely for my judgements predominantly on reason, but taking at the same time
into consideration the incidental emotional reactions of players, coaching
staff, and fans.
Writing this document would never be possible had there not been for the
invaluable contributions of my mother, Louisa Avgoustiniatou, who, while my
being abroad, has provided me with information for virtually every PAOK game
over the phone, and Tasos Natsis. Tasos, despite being a fan of our traditional
opponent, has sent me numerous videotapes of PAOK games and has been my expert
eye in Greece in the recent years. Our friendship began over the internet
during the 90-91 season, the most dramatic one in the long rivalry between our
teams. Special thanks go to Charis Papanagiotou, Giorgos and Orestis
Papasouliotis, Giannis Anagnostakis, Giorgos Daoutidis, Dimitris Diamantidis,
Petros Kapoulas, and Antonis Stefanidis for supplying me with videotapes and
other PAOK-related material. Thanks are also due to Costas Tokatlidis and many
members of the PAOK-fans email list, especially Kostas Anagnostakis, Tassos
Golnas, Ippokraths Karakasoglou, Giwrgos Makridis, Fotis Pantazoglou, Lefteris
Skapetis, Pantelis Topalis, and Dimitris Zisiadis for their help on WWW-related
issues and their useful and encouraging comments. Additional thanks go to
Kostas Anagnostakis and Tassos Golnas for hosting links to this document in the
PAOK Homepage and its US Mirror, which they respectively administer. Also some
of the pictures displayed in this document have been taken from the PAOK
Homepage, and their original contributors are acknowledged there. I would like
to thank particularly Kostas Giannakidis who has supplied me with hard to
find details from the archives of the "Makethonia" and "Thessaloniki" newspapers
for which he works. I would also like to thank all the numerous friends in
Greece and abroad for our entertaining discussions about basketball in person,
over the phone, by mail, and, most of all, by email. Among them, and besides
those already mentioned, Abdul Barakat, Vassilis Charmandaris, Giannis
Galanakis, Dimitris Nanelis, and Tasos Pagonis, deserve particular recognition.
I'm sure there are more people that deserve special recognition, so this list is
gradually being expanded! Finally, I feel obliged but mostly very glad to
mention Panos Fasoulas who was the one person mainly responsible for my
transformation from a soccer to a predominantly basketball fan, some time in the
fall of 1981 (no disrespect meant to our soccer team: I still enjoyed a lot our
84-85 and 87-88 seasons). I remember that back then I told a friend that our
basketball team could be soon competitive at the European game level and some
day even climb to the top of European basketball, while our soccer team was very
far from doing something analogous. It took us about 10 years to do so, but now
PAOK's name is prominent in European Basketball. And we can certainly stay at
the top, despite last season's (1994-1995) setback.
You should keep in mind the following notes:
1) The files are formatted to exploit the Netscape WWW browser capabilities.
Using another browser won't affect the content but will probably affect the
nice appearance of the files.
2) I have written this text in English rather than Greek mainly because the WWW
is meant to be read by everybody, and the language that suits more this
purpose is the English one. Also, I hope that this will help many younger
readers with access to the WWW get familiar with the English basketball
terminology, at least to the limited extent and quality I have managed to
master. Because sooner or later the expansion of communications and the
possible globalization of basketball will render the knowledge of such
terminology very useful, if not necessary, to the basketball fan.
3) The spelling of non-Greek names is done in English or in their original form
and in both cases may be wrong. I think that the Greek press could and
should adopt the Latin version of foreign proper names and avoid unfortunate
inventions of Greek substitutes (e.g. Ingram for Ancrum etc). But as they
rarely, if ever, do, I had to rely most times to my best judgement on what
the probable Latin spelling of a proper name was (e.g. Jeanoline). The Latin
spelling of Greek names was used by necessity and is not necessarily the same
as the one used by their bearers.
4) Some minor inconsistencies or lack of data (for example in some cases the
times did not add up to the right total, or the names of the players that sat
on the bench but did not play were not available) were fixed using my best
judgement.
5) Occasionally initials or other symbols were used for brevity. Some of them
are listed below (the obvious ones are omitted):
A Assists
AEK Athletic Union of Constantinoupolites
Athlitiki Enosis Konstantinoupoliton
B Blocks
CSKA ? (part of Russian team name)
DR Defensive Rebounds
EC European Cup
ECH European Championship
FT Free-Throws
GAM GAMes
GC Greek Cup
KC Korac Cup
KK ? (part of Croatian team name)
MIN Minutes
OR Offensive Rebounds
OSFP Fan Club of Olympiakos Peiraeus
Olympiakos Syllogos Filathlon Peireos
OT OverTime
P Points
PAEEK Soccer Athletic Union of Kyreneia County
Pothosferiki Athlitiki Enosi Eparhias Kyreneias
PAO Panathenaic Athletic Club
Panathinaikos Athlitikos Omilos
PAOK Panthessalonikian Atheltic Club of Constantinoupolites
Panthessalonikios Athlitikos Omilos Konstantinoupoliton
PO Play-Offs
PPG Points Per Game
R Rebounds (in general)
RS Regular Season
S Steals
SEF Stadium of Peace & Friendship
Stathio Eirinis & Filias
TENDEX [P - shots taken - (FT taken)/2 + TR + A + S + B - TO] / MIN
(this is not necessarily identical to the official definition)
TO Turn-Overs
TOT TOTal
%TOT Percentage (%) of TOTal
TR Total Rebounds (DF + OR)
VAO Byzantine Athletic Club
Vizantinos Athlitikos Omilos
WWW World Wide Web
6) The number of "games" for each player, used to calculate his PPG stats, is
not the number of games the player actually played, but rather the number of
games for which the player was among the 10 available to play. This
convention makes justice to players who usually see very limited action in
comparison to players that do not play at all. It should be made clear,
however, that stats should be based on the actual time played and not on the
number of games, no matter how this number is defined. But the time data
being incomplete or tedious to collect, I have presented here the PPG stats
for their limited yet indicative value.
7) In scores, PAOK is listed always first, no matter whether the game is at home
or on the road.
8) Occasionally and for brevity reasons, it is not specified in the narrative
description of each year's games whether a game was played at home or on the
road. In such cases it is usually implied that a win is at home and a loss
on the road. But you can also consult the list with the game results at the
end of the text for the same year.
You should feel free to print any part of this document for easier reading but
you should not reproduce, distribute, or use it in any other way. I iterate
that the comments made are just my own opinions, unless otherwise stated, and
represent reality to the best of my knowledge, which may be limited. I kindly
request that you send any comments or corrections you may have, no matter how
insignificant they may seem (that includes simple typos), to the email address
eavgoust@mit.edu
I can't promise fast consideration of all corrections, but I will try to
implement them periodically into the text, subject to my approval. And when I
get in my hands my old archives that are not available to me right now, I will
also try to extend the document to include the years 1981-1988.
Stathis Avgoustiniatos
Cambridge, MA, USA
September 1995
Last additions: March 1996
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Author
Stathis Avgoustiniatos / eavgoust@mit.edu / March 1996