Greece: Eager to play as a TEAM once more

The golden generation of 2005 has grown up. And is eager to play, eager to prove that can be on time for another big basketball appointment. The goal is given: The Greeks want another success. They want to make the next step, to get to Beijing through the Olympic Qualifying Tournament. A goal they missed in Eurobasket finishing in the 4th place.

Panayotis Yannakis, a basketball icon not only for Greece, but whole Europe will be the one to lead Greece one more time from the bench. He is the only one who has celebrated a gold European medal as a player and a coach. He has formed a team that justifies exactly the meaning of the word "team". Although there are too many players that have the leading role in their clubs, when it comes to the National Team, everybody starts thinking as part of the whole and not as individuals.

The armoury will be full once more for Greece, since the love for the National Team is present once more. Nobody is thinking about the long season they had, but for the games to come wearing the blue and white uniform. The list is long… Dimitris Diamantidis, Theodoros Papaloukas and Vassilis Spanoulis will have the leading role in guards, along with Nikos Zissis, who had a rather strange season for his standards.

Zissis moved to CSKA Moscow last summer and got limited playing time -blame the regulations in Russia- after used to be the go to guy and have the leading part since his almost since his 16th birthday. Zissis either with cadets and junior national teams, or AEK and later Benetton Treviso.

Diamantidis, Spanoulis with the leading roles in Panathinaikos and Papaloukas in CSKA are the three musketeers in guards. All three of them are capable of scoring, defending, passing, running the fast break and providing spectacular plays.

Diamantidis almost comes as a synonym to the word defense and he can also score especially from long range. Spanoulis has as a "trade mark" the variety in penetrating.

Papaloukas has the ability to see team - mates and passes in places they are just invisible for the rest of the players! To these guys you can add Nikos Chatzivrettas a consistent player, who tries and works hard especially in defense and is able to score if the team needs it.

Tsartsaris, Kakiouzis, Fotsis, Vassilopoulos and Perperoglou are forming a line of tall guys that can go into the basket, gather rebounds, be a threat in the paint, but also "kill" the opponent from long range. Each one has a different "plus": Great moves and a reliable 3pt shot, cleverness and instinct, spectacle and jump, passion and energy, steals and… execution.

And then there are Bourousis and Schortsianitis, two players than fill the paint for the Greek National Team and almost totally different with each other. Bouroussis can provide with long range shooting, while Schortsianitis is a heavy player but with great moves who uses his strength in the best possible way. Last but not least there is Konstantinos (Kostas) D. Koufos, a player that is coming from USA as a silver medallist of last year's European Championship U18 and a great talent who has yet to gain experience and prove himself in big tournaments.