Panathinaikos have won their first four EuroLeague games. Paris, ASVEL, Maccabi Tel Aviv, then Fenerbahçe, each time by at least eighteen points, and nobody on the other side reached eighty. Their best start since 2007-08. I read it on BasketNews, at the club bar, between two bar tokens.
Then the owner, Dimitris Giannakopoulos, wrote on social media that it was a huge satisfaction to watch something so great being built, and that logically there would never be a reason to sit courtside again, “under any circumstances”. He also praised Zeljko Obradovic’s work.
I’ve never had a reason to sit courtside. I’ve got a folding chair next to the scorer’s table, and I don’t sit on that either, because there’s always a flask to refill, a parent looking for the changing-room key and a minibus asking for petrol. At our place, a free chair courtside is a chair we haven’t put away yet, mind you.
I’m not jealous, I’m a club president. I even find it lovely, a man watching something get built and no longer having any reason to sit down. I’ve got a coach too. He takes care of everything except the heating. The day he takes care of the heating, I’ll do the same: I’ll write in the club WhatsApp that I will never sit down again. Nobody will notice the difference, I don’t sit down already.
He also wrote that we’d be telling our grandkids about this season, whatever the results. That I understand. For us, it’s the season the pull-out stands in the council sports hall opened first time, and people still talk about it.
His chair, someone will have to put it away. I think of that person. As for me, I’ve still got mine to fold up, and the key to hand back.
It’s true, we checked: BasketNews.
