Olympiakos draws first blood in Basket League finals
The series of the Basket League finals is promising to be extremely interesting, as Olympiakos has already managed to snatch home advantage from Euroleague champion Panathinaikos with its road win on Wednesday.
The Reds led throughout Game 1 of the best-of-five series and won 89-84 in front of a capacity crowd of Panathinaikos supporters at the Olympic Sports Hall.
The players of coach Giorgos Bartzokas surprised the hosts with their tight defense, their biggest weapon all season, as they managed to contain the Greens’ transition and force them to try triple after triple.
Olympiakos fended off every comeback effort by Panathinaikos and stretched its lead up to 15 points (72-57). In the last quarter Panathinaikos improved its offense and put pressure on the visitors, to cut the distance up to three points (87-84), but Olympiakos would not yield and it scored a precious win to make it 1-0.
Thomas Walkup paced the Reds with 17 points and Nigel Williams Goss scored 16, while Kendrick Nunn made 21 points and Kostas Sloukas added 16 for Panathinaikos.
Game 2 of the series will be held in Piraeus on Friday.
