Legendary “Spanoulis” game
I guess it is difficult to create an offensive system in basketball. I say “I guess” because I am not experienced or knowledgeable enough to make a clear judgment on this matter. However, when you spend tons of hours playing basketball, it’s not that hard to understand things, anyway. It is possible to talk about certain attacking systems in European basketball. Especially, we see zipper, stagger, side PnR based offensive sets many times in games (y’all love Shane Larkin, Mike James, Malcolm Delaney in mismatch situations).
Olympiacos is undoubtedly not now in the most glorious period in its history. However, until a few years ago, they were a team that managed to find a place in Europe’s giants table without exception. Without a doubt, Vassilis Spanoulis was Oly’s hero.
Naturally, Spanoulis played the leading role of many offensive systems during his career at Oly. The offense, which Real Madrid head coach Pablo Laso called “Spanoulis”, had a fatal effect. Olympiacos won the Euroleague in London in 2013 with this offensive. They beat CSKA Moscow in the semi-final and Real Madrid in the final.
Oly used this offensive set many times in 2015 against Real Madrid at F4 in Madrid, but Real Madrid had such a tremendous night in the overall work (especially in the last period) that Oly is the team that finished the night second this time. had happened.
Pablo Laso describes the Spanoulis attack at a clinic he gave in Germany in 2017:
SPANOULIS
So in that game, Spanoulis starts on the corner. The other guard has the ball. One of the big men goes for screen to 1, and the screener pops out. 1 dribbles to inside, and throws the ball to the screener. The screener holds the ball while Spanoulis uses down screen or a casual screen. Basic handoff and Spanoulis has the ball. After the handoff, screen goes for a side PnR quickly. In that case, we have a lot of options depends on what we want. Use drift and lift move to create a 3-point window for 1 or 3. Maybe five screens for 1 or 3? Or Spanoulis finishes it with snake move? So as you will see in examples, there are a lot of options in this game. And that’s the reason that Pablo Laso had a nightmare about that play. Just hard to defend! Why? Mismatch, quick rotations, slides, Spanoulis’ BBIQ and court vision, Oly’s ideal roster to create space… If you did not understand, here is another “special” (lol) version.
CLIPS
2013 Final Four vs. Real Madrid
2013 Final Four: vs. CSKA Moscow
2015 Final Four: vs. Real Madrid