The 2015/16 Basket League season , officially Basket League SKRATS for sponsorship reasons , was the 76th edition of the Greek basketball championship . The regular season began on October 10, 2015 and ended on April 13, 2016. In the following playoffs, Olympiakos won the Greek championship on May 30, 2016.
For the summer break the KAOD AM announced. Genetics did not apply for a license for the current season and announced his relegation from the Basket League. For the team from Drama , last year's third of the A2 Ethniki , the GS Lavrio rose. It was Lavrio's first participation in the House of Lords.
The Rethymno AEGEAN club got a new main sponsor and was renamed Rethymno CRETAN KINGS . The decoration in the form of bull horns of the new logo pays homage to the Minotaur . The club sees itself as a representative of the entire island of Crete .
At the end of July 2015, the municipality of Kifisia , as well as the local business and trade association, confirmed their intensified cooperation with the AENK Dimoulas club, which is now known as the Kifisia basketball club, or Kifisia BC for short . The club, founded in 1996, has been playing first-class since the 2013/14 season. The shape of the previous logo was retained and only the characters were changed.
management
Changes worth mentioning during the summer break:
Giannis Sfairopoulos, who took over as coach at Olympiakos last season and led them to the championship and the final of the Euroleague , extended his contract prematurely for a further three years until 2018. Sfairopoulos, who started his coaching career at the age of nineteen in the youth departments of Apollon Kalamarias had already worked as an assistant coach at Olympiakos between 2005 and 2008.
Aleksandar Đorđević , the current Serbian national coach, has been courted by several top European clubs, including Olympiakos and Real Madrid , at the latest since he led the Serbian team to the final of the last World Cup . These offers orugević turned down, agreed this season to take over the coaching position at Panathinaikos. He should lead the Athenians back to the Final Four of the Euroleague, whose entry Panathinaikos had not reached since the 2011/12 season .
Player personal details
Changes worth mentioning during the summer break:
Vassilis Xanthopoulos , former Greek champion and cup winner with Panathinaikos, was presented as the new guard of Aris Saloniki. The former international was supposed to replace the emigrated Torey Thomas , who moved to the Polish first division club Rosa Radom . In addition to Thomas, Xanthopoulos posted the best league value with 39 steals in the past season. The Greek guard, who in the past also played for Obradoiro CAB in the ACB league, came to Thessaloniki from last year's relegated Panionios . There he got 6.8 points and 5.4 assists per game in 24 games.
Kostas Vasileiadis started his career at PAOK before moving to Malaga six years later at the end of the 2005/06 season to celebrate his and his first championship title with the Andalusians . He returned to PAOK via Olympiacos for one more season before continuing his career abroad. After further stints in Italy and Turkey, the swingman returned to PAOK this season. In addition to Vasileiadis, the Euroleague participant also announced the new signing of Nikola Markovic and Milenko Tepić . Tepic already played for Panathinaikos in the A1 Ethniki between 2009 and 2011, with whom he was able to celebrate winning the 2011 Euroleague in addition to two championship titles .
Kostas Sloukas was unable to reach an agreement with the Olympiakos management team on the extension of his expiring contract, although both parties previously confirmed that they would like to continue their cooperation. In addition to league rival Panathinaikos, the clubs CSKA Moscow and Fenerbahçe Ülker also expressed serious interest in the national player . Sloukas signed a three-year contract with Ülker and moved abroad for the first time. With Olympiakos, the Guard won the Greek championship twice and the Euroleague twice, the most highly endowed competition for club teams in European basketball.
Nikos Zisis held out the prospect of returning to the Basket League after ten years of abstinence. Above all, Olympiakos was interested in the Combo Guard, who wanted to sign him as a possible replacement for the sloukas who had emigrated, as was Zisis' former club AEK Athens. Ultimately, however, Zisis decided to switch to the reigning German champion Brose Baskets and continue his career under his former national coach Andrea Trinchieri , who also had a strong interest in the Greeks. In Bamberg Zisis signed for two years.
Aleksandar Vezenkov was voted the best young player in the Greek league for the third time in a row and was also voted MVP of the season for the first time last season. With 469 points in the main round, he was also the most successful thrower of the season. He was able to achieve another 153 points in the following playoffs, but failed with Aris in the semifinals at eventual champions Olympiakos. However, the forward had rejected a premature extension of his contract, which expired at the end of the season, and used an exit clause that had led him to buy out to FC Barcelona . In Barcelona he had signed a four-year contract and played alongside Stratos Perperoglou , who had also moved to FC Barcelona after only one season in the Turkish league. With the Anadolu Efes SK Perperoglou had won the Turkish runner-up and the national cup victory. Vezenkov was replaced at Aris by Okaro White who had to take over his leadership role in the club.
Nick Calathes played for Panathinaikos between 2009 and 2012 and was supposed to be brought back to Athens for the last season, but received no clearance from the Memphis Grizzlies . For this season, the record champions of Greece announced the return of the national player to his old place of work, who should henceforth strengthen the "Greens" again. From the NBA in the capital, Calathes followed the two centers Miroslav Raduljica and Ognjen Kuzmić , who joined their national coach Đorđević, who had taken over the management of Panathinaikos. These players were placed alongside Panathinaikos captain Dimitris Diamantidis , who announced this summer that he would play his last season of his career. Diamantidis is one of the most important players in the last decade of the basket and Euroleague. Among other things, he leads the categories for most steals and rebounds in the all-time leaderboards of the Euroleague .
Kostas Mexas was introduced on October 26, 2015 as the new trainer of Apollon Patras Carna. Thus Mexas took over the office of Thanasis Papachatzis, who had been on leave after three defeats in the first three games of the season by the club management Apollo. Mexas trained the KAOD AM for the previous season . Genetics , for whom he had worked since 2011, initially as an assistant coach, later as head coach, and which he left for the summer.
Giannis Tzimas became the second coach to vacate his coaching chair for the current season. After five defeats in the first six games, the board of Kavala BC reacted on November 17, 2015 with the dismissal of Tzima and presented Steve Giatzoglou, a former player legend of Olympiacos, their new coach that same evening. In the past, Giatzoglou coached the clubs Aris, AEK and Olympiakos before he was a technical advisor for the GS Peristeri in the 2009/10 season . He then continued his career as a coach in the Korean basketball league.
Jure Zdovc signed a two and a half year contract with AEK on December 20, 2015 and took over for Dragan Šakota, who internally moved to the post of General Manager. For the Slovenian, who was voted Trainer of the Year in the 2012 ULEB Eurocup competition , the AEK was not the first coaching station in Greece. He was already active as a player and coach for Iraklis Saloniki in the past .
Player personal details
Notable changes during the main round:
Vasileios Kavvadas , Center des Olympiakos, was loaned to the Arkadikos club after the third matchday until the end of the season. Already during the summer break, the 24-year-old was on loan, as the departure of Bryant Dunston , who had decided not to stay in Piraeus, as the Anadolu Efes club had offered him a better offer than Olympiakos' at the time, with the commitment was compensated by Patric Young and Kavvadas thus found no place in the rotation of Olympiacos. The teams from Aris Saloniki, Kifisia BC and Kolossos H-Hotels were also interested in a loan deal. For Olympiakos, the loan deal proved to be disadvantageous, as just a few days later Patric Young was injured so badly that he was out for the rest of the season.
Sofoklis Schortsanitis once began his professional career at Iraklis Saloniki and also played for local rivals Aris for one season . On November 2, 2015, he was introduced as the new PAOK player. With the black and white colors on, the former national player of Greece played for all three major clubs in Thessaloniki . The center and former national player of Greece was signed by Red Star Belgrade in the summer , but his contract was terminated by mutual agreement after two months of cooperation.
Dimitris Mavroeidis was still in the squad of Olympiacos for the 2012/13 season. Due to a serious injury towards the end of the season, he was not only absent from Olympiakos defending his title in the Euroleague competition , but also had to sit out the entire 2013/14 season. In 2014/15 Mavroeidis returned to the floor and signed a one-year contract with AENK Dimoulas in Kifisia. There the center came to 13.96 points and 7.54 rebounds per game. At the beginning of this season, the former international signed for another year with AENK and turned down an offer from PAOK. With a corresponding opt-out clause, however, he terminated his contract in Kifisia after the fifth match day and was announced as a new addition to the AEK on November 9, 2015. The Kifisia club, for their part, compensated Mavroeidi's departure by signing Andreas Glyniadakis . The club confirmed this in the evening hours of November 11, 2015. Glyniadakis began his season with the Swiss champions, the Lions de Genève , scored 11.3 points and 5.0 rebounds per game and has now returned after a three-year odyssey Greece.
According to media reports, Georgios Diamantakos was about to move to Darüşşafaka Istanbul in the summer . However, the center should initially continue to play in the Basket League and loan it to Kifisia BC. Ultimately, the young international moved directly to Kifisia. There, however, he was hardly considered, counted few stakes. On November 18, 2015, Apollon Patras announced the engagement of Diamantakos, who should strengthen the Mexas team for the next two years. However, this announcement was published too early, according to the regulations of the league association, the player change was not feasible and thus Diamantakos, who had already signed in Patras and started training, was not eligible to play for the Apollon. Ultimately, Diamantakos moved to GKK Šibenik in the second Croatian league on January 16, 2016 .
Kostas Papanikolaou returned to the Basket League after a two-and-a-half year absence, which he had left in favor of FC Barcelona and the Houston Rockets . He put on the Olympiakos jersey again on January 31, 2016 as the reigning champions on matchday 17, which Arkadikos had defeated in Trikala with 103: 60 points. On his comeback, Papanikolaou enriched the game with seven points and three assists, while he secured four rebounds for his team.
The quarterfinals were played in " Best of Three " mode, the following rounds in "Best of Five" mode
Results
Quarter finals
Semifinals
final
1
Olympiacos Piraeus
2
8th
Rethymno Cretan Kings
0
1
Olympiacos Piraeus
3
4th
AEK Athens
0
4th
AEK Athens
2
5
PAOK Saloniki
1
1
Olympiacos Piraeus
3
2
Panathinaikos Athens
1
2
Panathinaikos Athens
2
7th
Kolossos H Hotels
0
2
Panathinaikos Athens
3
3
Aris Saloniki
2
3
Aris Saloniki
2
6th
Kifisia Dimoulas
0
Overview
Results
Quarter finals
#
Team 1
#
Team 2
Game 1
Game 2
Game 3
Game 4
Game 5
1
Olympiacos Piraeus
8th
Rethymno Cretan Kings
102 : 71
77 : 73
––
––
––
4th
AEK Athens
5
PAOK Saloniki
78: 83
68 : 59
61 : 54
––
––
2
Panathinaikos Athens
7th
Kolossos H Hotels
91 : 63
80 : 71
––
––
––
3
Aris Saloniki
6th
Kifisia Dimoulas
78 : 60
108: 103
––
––
––
Semifinals
1
Olympiacos Piraeus
4th
AEK Athens
93 : 58
80 : 67
89 : 75
––
––
2
Panathinaikos Athens
3
Aris Saloniki
85 : 79
74 : 60
68: 77
50: 56
84 : 68
Game for third place
3
Aris Saloniki
4th
AEK Athens
67: 77
84: 89
74 : 69
81: 89
––
final
1
Olympiacos Piraeus
2
Panathinaikos Athens
81: 83
68 : 66
77 : 72
82:81
––
Champions team
In brackets the stakes for the season in the Basket League. In the main round, 26 games were played. In the playoffs, another nine followed for Olympiakos.
Olympiacos Piraeus
AEK Athens
PAOK Saloniki
Panathinaikos Athens
Kolossos H Hotels
