(and one day, this post is seven minutes late, shh!)
On December 2, 1979, Nikos Galis played his first game ever with Ares Thessaloniki. This was a milestone not only for the team of Ares, but for Greek basketball in general. Thanks to these guy (and a few others) the Greek national basketball team stop being a decent team, and became an excellent one, among Europe's finest.
If not for Galis, who knows what would have happened. The current coach to the Greek national team, Panagiotis Giannakis, was perhaps almost as good a player, but Galis was a showman. He was the guy that everyone went to watch, the one that everyone was speaking about. And he was one hell of a scorer, rivaling even the late Drazen Petrovic.
Sadly, Galis was playing at a time when non-American players weren't that popular in the NBA, so it was hard for him to play in a team of that league, even if he were Greek-American himself. Had he been born twenty years later, he'd probably be a major player in the NBA right now. My only concern would be the fact that he was rather slow, while NBA players are generally quite fast. Anyway, not much use in discussing what-ifs, except for the fun of it.
Here's some highlights from the 1987 European Championship final, the game is Greece V. USSR (Greece won 103-101.)
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