Panagiotis Giannakis born on January the 1st 1959, nicknamed “The Dragon”, is a retired Greek professional basketball player and a current professional basketball coach for Aris Thessaloniki. He is the former head coach of EuroLeague powerhouse Olympiacos and the senior Greek national basketball team. Under Giannakis’ guidance, the Greek national team won the gold medal at the EuroBasket 2005, and the silver medal at the 2006 FIBA World Championship in Japan. Giannakis also coached an Athenian professional team, Maroussi, which he led to the forefront of the Greek League. He has also been the head coach of the senior Chinese national team.
\nA true floor general from the point guard position, Giannakis began his pro basketball playing career in Greece, with Ionikos Nikaias, before moving to Aris, where he spent the major part of his playing career. In Thessaloniki, he helped to lead the Yellows (Aris) to three consecutive EuroLeague Final Fours between 1988 and 1990, as well as to a FIBA European Cup (later re-named to Saporta Cup) title in 1993. In the summer of 1993, he was transferred to Panionios, and finally a year later, to Panathinaikos, with whom he won a EuroLeague championship in 1996. On February 3, 2008, Giannakis was chosen as one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors over the previous half-century by the EuroLeague Basketball Experts Committee. Giannakis was, along with Nikos Galis, Panagiotis Fasoulas, and Fanis Christodoulou, one of the main stars of the legendary late 1980s Greek National Team that put Greece on the world basketball map. He was their captain when they won the EuroBasket of 1987, and were the silver-medalists at the same championship two years later. Furthermore, Giannakis was an important member of the Greek national team when they reached the EuroBasket semifinals in 1993 and 1995, as well as the FIBA World Championship semifinals in 1994.
\nGiannakis was born and raised in a poor neighborhood of Nikaia, Athens. \u0397is parents, Dimitris, owner of a motorbike workshop, and Kalliope, a weaver, gave birth to five boys. Panagiotis is the youngest child of the family. Giannakis started playing football around his neighborhood. He showed an early inclination to sports, and tried basketball. He began watching the games of a local basketball club, and he was later approached by the coach of the youth team of Ionikos Nikaias, who asked him to join their team. Giannakis began his career with the Ionikos Nikaias youth team in 1971. His first coach, George Vassilakopoulos, moved him up to the club’s senior men’s first team, from the youth squad, at the age of just 13. His exceptional play at such a young age, drew the eyes of pro basketball experts on him. In 1982, he was selected by the Boston Celtics, with the 205th pick of the 1982 NBA Draft. On January 24, 1981, Ionikos Nikaias, led by a 22-year-old Giannakis, played against Aris Thessaloniki, which was led by Nikos Galis. Aris won in a tight game, by a score of 113-114. The game is memorable in the history of Greek pro club basketball, because in the game, Giannakis scored 73 points, and Galis scored 62 points, achieving the 2nd and 4th most points scored in one game of the Greek League basketball championship.
\nOn August 3, 1984, Giannakis was transferred to the Greek club Aris Thessaloniki, after the club paid a transfer fee contract buyout to Ionikos Nikaias for his player rights, in the amount of 42 million Greek Drachmas, which was considered a huge amount of money for a transfer buyout at that time. There, he teamed up with Nikos Galis, to form one half of an historic “tag-team” that took Greek and European basketball by storm for the years to come. His first season with Aris, the 1984\u201385 season, was a great success. He won both the Greek League championship, and the Greek Cup title. In the final of the latter, Giannakis made 8 out of 12 3-pointers, leading his team to victory over Panathinaikos. And this was only the beginning, as 6 more consecutive Greek League championships, and 5 more Greek Cup championships with Aris were to follow.\u00a0
\nAfter 9 years with Aris, Giannakis moved to the Greek club Panionios, for the 1993\u201394 season. He stayed there for a year, and then moved again to another Greek club, Panathinaikos, where he played from 1994\u201396, and he finished his career as a player there.
\nWith Aris, Giannakis took part in 3 consecutive EuroLeague Final Fours: Ghent 1988, Munich 1989, and Zaragoza 1990. Aris joined the elite of European basketball clubs, but a European title did not come for Giannakis until much later, in 1993, when he won the FIBA European Cup (later re-named Saporta Cup), in the final in Turin. By then, Nikos Galis had left Aris, and joined Panathinaikos, and Giannakis had become the de facto leader and franchise player of Aris.
\nIn 1994, Giannakis moved to Panathinaikos, where he finally won the EuroLeague title, as he won the Final in 1996, in Paris. He also won the Greek Cup title with Panathinaikos that same year, making it the 7th Greek Cup title he won in his playing career, to go along with his 7 Greek League championships. He ended his pro playing career having competed in 5 EuroLeague Final Fours (3 with Aris and 2 with Panathinaikos).
\nGiannakis led the Greek junior national team to the silver medal at the FIBA Europe Under-16 Championship of 1975. A year later, he debuted with the senior men’s Greek national basketball team, as a 17-year-old, versus the Czechoslovakian national basketball team. In 1979, he won the gold medal at the Mediterranean Games. He was also the captain of the senior men’s Greek national team that won the gold medal at the EuroBasket 1987, and the silver medal at the EuroBasket 1989. During his playing time with the Greek national team, Greece participated in 27 international competitions. He retired from the national team as a player on August 2, 1996, after taking part in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games at Atlanta.
\nUnconventionally, the very next year after he retired from playing with the Greek national team, Giannakis started his coaching career as the head coach of the Greek National Team in 1997. He stayed the head coach of the national team for 2 years, leading the team to a 4th-place finish at the EuroBasket 1997, and a 4th-place finish at the 1998 FIBA World Championship. He then moved to the professional club level, and coached Panionios, until 2002, when he was then named the head coach of Maroussi. He stayed with Maroussi until 2006, having taken over the team in relative obscurity, and having turned it into the 3rd most prominent team in the Greek League, along with the help of his star point guard Vassilis Spanoulis, whose playing style and player attributes were often compared to Giannakis’.
\nHe returned to coach the national team in 2004, for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, where he led the Greek team to a 5th-place finish. The next year, under his coaching, Greece won the EuroBasket 2005, marking the second time that Greece had won the EuroBasket. After 2006, he no longer simultaneously coached on the professional club level and national team level, as he decided to focus his full attention on the Greek national team only. In 2006, he coached the national team of Greece to a second-place finish at the 2006 FIBA World Championship. In the World Championship’s semifinal game, held on September 1, 2006, Giannakis’ Greek team beat the heavily favored United States national basketball team for the first time, by a score of 101-95.
\nOn the 3rd of February 2008, Giannakis signed on to coach the EuroLeague power Olympiacos, with a 2-and-a-half year contract. In December 2008, he ended his tenure as the head coach of Greece’s national team, and was succeeded by Jonas Kazlauskas. In June 2010, Olympiacos announced that Giannakis would not coach the team next season. During the two-and-a-half year period that he coached Olympiacos, Giannakis had led the team to the 2010 Greek Cup (which was the team’s first trophy in eight years), to two consecutive EuroLeague Final Fours (which included one EuroLeague Final and were the club’s first EuroLeague Final Four appearances since 1999) and to three consecutive Greek League Finals appearances.
\nGiannakis was also the head coach of the French League club Limoges CSP during the 2012\u201313 season, and the senior men’s Chinese national basketball team at the 2013 FIBA Asia Championship. He became the head coach of Aris in 2017.
\n\u00a0
\nAwards and accomplishments
\n(As a player):
\nClub career
\nGreek League Top Scorer: (1980)
\n3x FIBA European Selection: (1980, 1987, 1990)
\n2x Greek Cup Finals Top Scorer: (1985, 1988)
\nGreek League MVP: (1987)
\nGreek League Assist leader: (1989)
\nHis personal best for points scored in a single game was 73 points scored,[9] in 1981, as a player of Ionikos Nikaias (which ironically occurred against Aris, his future team).
\nSelected by the NBA professional club the Boston Celtics, in the 1982 NBA Draft.
\n7x Greek Cup Winner: (1985, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1996)
\n7x consecutive Greek League Champion: (1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991)
\nAlong with Nikos Galis, he led Aris to an 80-game winning streak in the Greek League, in the 1980s.
\nFIBA European Cup (Saporta Cup) Champion: (1993)
\nEuroLeague Champion: (1996)
\nIn total, he won 16 championships in his pro club career as a player.
\nWhen he retired from his club playing career, he held the records for the most games played in the Greek League (493), and the most games played in the EuroLeague (163).
\nHe scored 9,291 points in Greek League competitions (counting all league formats since the 1963\u201364 season) (3rd all-time).
\nMember of the Eurobasket.com website’s European Basketball Hall of Fame, inducted as a player.
\nEuroLeague’s 50th anniversary 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors List: (2008)
\nGreek national team
\n1975 FIBA Europe Under-16 Championship:\u00a0 Silver
\n1979 Mediterranean Games:\u00a0 Gold
\nEuroBasket 1987:\u00a0 Gold
\nEuroBasket 1989:\u00a0 Silver
\nHe holds the record for national team caps, with 351, with the senior men’s Greek National Basketball Team, which is also a record for any European player.
\nHe holds the record for total Greek national team caps, men’s and boy’s, with 402.
\nHe holds the record, with 5,301 points scored with the senior men’s Greek National Team.
\nHe holds the record, with 6,202 points scored in total, with the Greek National Team (men’s and boy’s).
\n(As a head coach):
\nClub career
\n2x Greek League Best Coach: (2004, 2006)
\nGreek Cup Winner: (2010)
\nGreek national team
\nEuroBasket 2005:\u00a0 Gold
\n2006 Stankovi\u0107 Cup:\u00a0 Gold
\n2006 FIBA World Championship:\u00a0 Silver
\nHe is the only person to win the EuroBasket, both as a player (EuroBasket 1987), and as a head coach (EuroBasket 2005)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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