Pfft! Basketball is a Welcomed Distraction!

By: Peter Katsiris | March 26th, 2009

Theoffside.com readers, you might remember the attack on popularity of basketball by Daryl and Chris over on the main page, but this past week or so has allowed me to pick up an opinion of my own. While football is, and always will be, my favourite sport, basketball is quietly creeping in to sooth the pain of footballing disappointments.

Now you may say how disappointed can I be with Olympiacos winning twelve of the last thirteen Greek titles, and more than half of the available Greek Championships with thirty-seven to their name. But there enough pain to go around in Piraeus and all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to my hometown of Burlington, Ontario.

What am I talking about? Well it really sucks when your club – or I guess I should say my club – dominates on the domestic scene – we pretty much rewrote the definition – and fails to reach at least half of their potential in European competition.

Last week was the draw for the UEFA Champions League, and the UEFA Cup, and although it has been exactly a month since Olympiacos’ defeat and humiliating elimination to Saint-Etienne in the UEFA Cup, there is still a little bit of a scar.

The pain might be bitter, but I am really glad I am able to keep up with another sport known as basketball. Yes, I do follow basketball, and I am rather fortunate to be supporting a club that is excelling in their endeavours on the hardwood. I’m not a fan of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Boston Celtics, or the Los Angeles Lakers, instead my stripes reflect support for those awful Toronto Raptors; however, they aren’t the ones soothing the pain suffered from Olympiacos’ misery.

Instead it’s all thanks to Olympiacos BC, or Olympiacos Basketball Club, that I am able to live during these tough times as the basketball department of the world’s greatest club is striving towards the EUROLEAGUE Finals in Berlin, Germany.

The EUROLEAGUE is basketball’s edition of the UEFA Champions League, but the only difference is Olympiacos is still alive as the tournament reaches the quarter-finals. It is no surprise that Olympiacos is still in with a shot to reach the next round and collect silverware in the German capital during the annual Final-4, but in comparison to football it’s a refreshing change.

Last year Olympiacos’ football outfit reached the round of sixteen and then Chelsea rained on our parade. In this year’s Champions League Anorthosis Famagusta bitterly sent us crashing to the UEFA Cup, but there is no room for such a result in the basketball world.

Firstly, English teams are not even rated among the top clubs in the basketball world, and neither are Cypriot clubs; rather Greek clubs are rightly at the top of the food chain alongside Spanish sides.

That takes us to this year’s layout of the EUROLEAGUE where Olympiacos is locked in a best-of-five series with Real Madrid during the tournament’s quarter-final stage. Can you imagine seeing that in the football world? Not the best-of-five series, unless FIFA pulls something out of their ass, again. I mean the Olympiacos vs. Real Madrid side of things. First of all neither side is able to reach this status in football, despite all the prestige in Madrid, and all the domestic success Olympiacos has achieved in the Greek Super League.

So the prospect of Olympiacos facing off against Real Madrid on the basketball court is rather exciting for me, and not to mention my side is already leading the series 1-0 after a win in Greece on Tuesday.

So for those aforementioned ones who attack basketball, there is a good side to this sport: it brings me happiness in times of European droughts; and after all, American football, or throw-ball, is the real enemy!