Panathinaikos’ October jitters aren’t a crisis
Ergin Ataman is moaning, Panathinaikos lost a derby, and TJ Shorts has yet to shine. It smells like a rather normal October for the Greens. Emmet Ryan writes that it is far from time to panic and that this edition of Panathinaikos may yet be built to go all the way.
With Frank Ntilikina stealing the show with a big score late in the Greek derby, it’s easy to think that the Green side is ready to panic. Olympiacos look far more advanced in terms of chemistry yet they ought to at this point in time.
With Panathinaikos dropping only one other game to date this season, it’s not like anyone is actually worried. Yet still, the drama that surrounds the Greens is inescapable. This version however has me thinking an awful lot about the side that won it all in 2024.
Vintage Ataman…in the postgame
Ah Ergin Ataman, a man who throws himself on a microphone like he’s saving his players from a grenade. The Panathinaikos coach has been in full Irish mammy form with his mutterings about what’s not working so far.
“We have a lot of things to work on, we are not ready 100% and with this basketball, it will be very difficult not just to go to the Final Four, but to go to the playoffs…We are worse than the last two years in this situation,” he said after losing to Barcelona.
Victory over Baskonia, a first road win there in 8 years, didn’t improve his mood: “Of course, I’m not 100 per cent happy with how we played tonight. Except for Kendrick Nunn, our performance was terrible! With only one player, we can’t achieve any of our goals. It’s a very dangerous situation because, honestly, I don’t like this basketball …you cannot win with such a roster with only one player, it is a very dangerous situation that we have now, and we will try to solve it.”
It’s October, it’s best to accept that Ergin Ataman needs to be this guy. He wants his teams to go a certain way mentally over the course of a campaign and nothing can interfere with the arc.
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None of this should come as a surprise
Panathinaikos may not have gone through the type of roster overhaul that preceded their run to the title in 2024 or even last summer but the changes have come in places more likely to have an impact on chemistry.
Richaun Holmes is playing his first ever season outside of the US. Considering he turns 32 on Wednesday, that’s an awful lot of norms to unteach him. Holmes has habits that come from a decade of NBA style ball. The standard may be high but there’s still a lot of adjusting to do.
The other big switch of course came in the arrival of TJ Shorts. It’s clear that Ergin Ataman doesn’t fully trust him yet. Maybe that’s a bit harsh but Ataman certainly hasn’t worked out exactly how he wants to use Shorts yet. The Euroleague winning side of 2023/24 had an ugly front half of its campaign. Then it got everything together. A similar arc feels likely.
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So what to make of it?
It’s October. That’s really the whole point. To get a bit deeper, look at how Ergin Ataman both uses a rotation and paces a roster. With the former, he loves to keep things very tight. No matter the talent, and Panathianikos has plenty, he wants a short rotation.
Ataman broke that mould in the Euroleague season opener, with 11 players seeing the floor and 10 getting 10 minutes or more. He kept with that approach in the defeat to Barcelona before getting back to having a core of 8 in the win over Baskonia. It’s still an experimental phase of the campaign so how that adjusts is worth watching.
With the pacing, he’s already going heavy minutes on some players, most notably Kendrick Nunn. How he works TJ Shorts into the rotation is going to be most interesting here. The Baskonia outing wasn’t stellar for Shorts but he showed considerable progression in the defeat to Olympiacos on Sunday.
The prognosis
There wasn’t a full team by team preview of Euroleague this season on this site because of EuroBasket overwhelming our resources (namely me). Had there been, there’s no doubt the Greens would have been listed as a Euroleague Final Four team.
I have zero reason to even consider adjusting that. Between players recovering from the EuroBasket run and the obvious chemistry areas to address, a stellar start from Panathinaikos was unlikely. The goal was to avoid digging a big hole. They’ve managed that comfortably so far even if the performances haven’t been eye popping.
For now, this is an unintended blessing for neutral observers. Panathinaikos will be a must-watch while working out their kinks. You never know what version will turn up. Once they are flowing, and they will flow, they’ll just be one of the most exciting teams on the planet to watch.
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