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DIMITRIS ITOUDIS_31 Masterminds of European Basketball

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asketball<br />

teacher<br />

Dimitris<br />

Itoudis<br />

The town <strong>of</strong> Trikala is some 35 kilometers<br />

away from Thessaloniki. It<br />

was there that a 13-yer-old named<br />

Dimitris Itoudis started his sports<br />

career. He played football. However,<br />

two factors made him switch sports.<br />

The coach <strong>of</strong> the junior team didn’t like his long<br />

hair and asked Itoudis to go to the barber to get<br />

it cut. Young Dimitris refused. That incident was<br />

coupled, in time, with the victory <strong>of</strong> the Greek<br />

national team at the 1987 EuroBasket, played in<br />

Athens. Nikos Galis, Panagiotis Giannakis and the<br />

rest <strong>of</strong> the Greek players at once became <strong>European</strong><br />

champs and national heroes. That was all young<br />

Itoudis needed to try his luck at basketball.<br />

In a long interview with many details about his<br />

life, Itoudis told me that since his brief days as a<br />

player, he had wanted to be a coach. When the moment<br />

came, he wanted to study physical education<br />

in the former Yugoslavia system, from which many<br />

great coaches had come. He chose the University<br />

<strong>of</strong> Zagreb, where they had a specialized section for<br />

basketball coaches.<br />

“The first year, I learned the language, since I had<br />

got there knowing only three words,” Itoudis said.<br />

“I had problems with the negation word – ne – in<br />

Serbo-Croatian because in Greek it just means the<br />

opposite! The following year I passed the enrollment<br />

test and I was the first <strong>of</strong> 148 candidates.”<br />

65<br />

<strong>31</strong> MASTERMINDS <strong>of</strong> EUROPEAN BASKETBALL<br />

I


Vladimir Stankovic<br />

Itoudis will always be grateful to his parents, especially<br />

his father, a peasant who worked hard to sell his<br />

products in order to pay for his son’s education away<br />

from home. Little by little, as a great student, Itoudis<br />

started to work in local club Mladost, where Nikola<br />

Plecas <strong>of</strong> Cibona and Damir Solan <strong>of</strong> Jugoplastika,<br />

two great players in the former Yugoslavia, had grown<br />

up. A fellow student, Igor Jukic, <strong>of</strong>fered him a job with<br />

the juniors at Mladost. The second step Itoudis took<br />

towards his future coaching career was heeding a call<br />

from Zeljko Ciglar to work with the women’s team <strong>of</strong><br />

Lokomotiva Zagreb. His talent to teach and explain<br />

soon opened the doors to KK Zagreb for him. Bosko<br />

Bozic, the legendary coach at that club, brought Itoudis<br />

on board together with his friend, Jukic.<br />

From Vitoria to Vitoria<br />

Itoudis finished his studies in 1994 and passed<br />

with flying colors. He was back to Thessaloniki and<br />

started to work as a coach in humble local clubs like<br />

Filipos and Menta. Word <strong>of</strong> mouth spread and PAOK<br />

called young Itoudis to work as an assistant to Christos<br />

Alexandridis, who was later waived. The new boss<br />

was Efthymis Kiomourtzoglou, who kept Itoudis by<br />

his side as an assistant. After some unexpected loss,<br />

Kiomourtzoglou resigned and the club promoted<br />

Itoudis to head coach. He made his debut as a head<br />

coach in 1995 against Dynamo Moscow with a young<br />

Predrag Stojakovic on his team. Legendary coach<br />

Alexander Gomelskiy, who was a TV commentator on<br />

Russian TV at the time, congratulated him after the<br />

game telling him: “Kid, you have a bright future on<br />

the bench.” Fate, coincidence, luck and, mostly, merit<br />

allowed Itoudis to get back to Moscow 20 years later<br />

as a head coach <strong>of</strong> CSKA. But long before that, he was<br />

in Vitoria, where he would return in 2019 to play the<br />

Final Four with CSKA.<br />

“At the end <strong>of</strong> the 1994-95 season, PAOK had<br />

signed Zeljko Lukajic, a Serbian coach. I was his assistant,<br />

we reached the Saporta Cup final and we lost in<br />

Vitoria to Baskonia by 81-88,” Itoudis remembers.<br />

In May <strong>of</strong> 2019, Itoudis was back to Vitoria for his<br />

fifth straight Final Four with CSKA. Coincidence? Not<br />

at all. It was all about Itoudis’s merits.<br />

By the mid-1990, another Zeljko, Obradovic, entered<br />

the life <strong>of</strong> Itoudis.<br />

“We met each other at a tournament in the Netherlands.<br />

I was still with KK Zagreb and he coached Joventut<br />

Badalona. We exchanged telephone numbers<br />

without thinking that fate would makes us reunite a<br />

few years later,” Itoudis told me.<br />

Itoudis revealed a detail about Obradovic that I did<br />

not know. In 1999, Obradovic was with the Yugoslav<br />

national team in Thessaloniki, preparing for EuroBas-<br />

ket. Aris contacted him to negotiate a contract, but<br />

there was no agreement in the end. A little later, Obradovic<br />

called Itoudis for a visit at the Panorama Hotel<br />

in Thessaloniki.<br />

“He surprised me by telling me he had just signed<br />

for Panathinaikos and that he wanted me as his assistant.<br />

I didn’t hesitate for a second and accepted on<br />

the spot,” Itoudis remembers. “My father was at the<br />

hospital, recovering from a heart attack. I asked the<br />

doctors whether I could give him the good news or<br />

not, as I feared it could cause a negative effect on him,<br />

but the doctors told me it could also trigger positive<br />

effects.”<br />

That was the start <strong>of</strong> a relationship that lasts to<br />

this day: strong friendship strengthened by a family<br />

bond, as Obradovic was the best man at Itoudis’s<br />

wedding. Some said that Itoudis was a translator for<br />

Obradovic, but he was much more. Most <strong>of</strong> all, he was<br />

a qualified coach, a basketball teacher and also a loyal<br />

friend. The duo <strong>of</strong> Obradovic and Itoudis was at Panathinaikos<br />

for 13 years, winning five EuroLeague titles,<br />

11 Greek Leagues and seven Greek cups. Itoudis was<br />

always under the shadow <strong>of</strong> the big boss, but always<br />

had his own ideas, which Obradovic respected. They<br />

worked with mutual confidence, as a perfect duo. It<br />

was clear that Itoudis had the ability to work as a head<br />

coach, the only question was when he would do it. Of<br />

Obradovic, Itoudis highlights a will to listen to different<br />

opinions instead <strong>of</strong> just, “Yes, boss.”<br />

“If it rains, Zeljko is not interested in confirming<br />

just the obvious, but he wants to analyze why it is<br />

raining, when it’s going to stop and what will happen<br />

next,” Itoudis says. “Obradovic not only changed the<br />

way I look at basketball, but he also changed my life.”<br />

Itoudis confessed that during those 13 years with<br />

Obradovic, he had as many as three <strong>of</strong>fers to be a<br />

head coach elsewhere, the most interesting one having<br />

been from Vitoria, <strong>of</strong> all places. Itoudis says that<br />

he personally thanked Josean Querejeta, Baskonia’s<br />

president, because he was the first one to see him as<br />

a head coach. But he turned down all the <strong>of</strong>fers to be<br />

loyal to his best man and friend, so they could finish<br />

their job together at Panathinaikos. Itoudis explains<br />

that he learned the most from Obradovic in the locker<br />

room.<br />

“You can learn tactics in books, in clinics or with<br />

time and experience. However, the locker room is<br />

something you must know from the inside to understand<br />

the character and the soul <strong>of</strong> the players, to<br />

know when and how to react. Zeljko is the absolute<br />

best with that.”<br />

When Obradovic left Panathinaikos, Itoudis did<br />

the same. Just like Obradovic, Itoudis took a sabbatical<br />

year, and when an <strong>of</strong>fer from Banvit <strong>of</strong> Turkey<br />

arrived, the first person he called was, you guessed<br />

it, Obradovic, who advised him to go to the meeting<br />

and listen to the <strong>of</strong>fer. It was a three-year deal and<br />

Itoudis accepted. But after a good season with Banvit,<br />

the <strong>of</strong>fer from CSKA Moscow landed on his table. His<br />

ongoing contract was an obstacle, but Itoudis says<br />

he will never forget the gesture <strong>of</strong> Banvit president<br />

Ozgan Kilic and owners Omer and Turgut Goremer.<br />

They told him that he could forget about the contract,<br />

that he was free to join CSKA.<br />

Itoudis, like the brilliant student <strong>of</strong> the Yugoslav<br />

school that he was, started to build a team from the<br />

ground up. When the call from CSKA arrived, he asked<br />

for Milos Teodosic to stay and his second request was<br />

to get Nando De Colo on the team. That was how the<br />

duo <strong>of</strong> Teodosic and De Colo – similar to that formed<br />

Dimitris Itoudis<br />

66 67<br />

<strong>31</strong> MASTERMINDS <strong>of</strong> EUROPEAN BASKETBALL<br />

I


Vladimir Stankovic<br />

by Galis and Giannakis in Greece during Itoudis’s<br />

youth – was born.<br />

Itoudis likes to give players a lot <strong>of</strong> freedom. He respects<br />

the philosophy <strong>of</strong> another coach in this book,<br />

Pr<strong>of</strong>essor Aleksandar Nikolic, someone Itoudis had<br />

the honor – his words – to meet. Nikolic insisted that a<br />

coach must adapt to the characteristics <strong>of</strong> his players.<br />

Itoudis likes to say, “You cannot deny a player his right<br />

to make mistakes!”<br />

Itoudis does not have any problems with passes<br />

going behind the back or between the legs, or any<br />

other kinds <strong>of</strong> attractive plays to satisfy the fans, but<br />

he remarks that every idea must be executed towards<br />

the game and the result.<br />

Championship game against his best man<br />

While they worked together at Panathinaikos, Itoudis<br />

and Obradovic never dreamed <strong>of</strong> playing against<br />

each other, not to mention doing so in a EuroLeague<br />

championship game. Since the moment that Itoudis<br />

joined CSKA, however, such a clash could not be<br />

avoided. His start in Moscow was perfect, with a 10-<br />

0 record to open the 2014-15 regular season. CSKA<br />

would then finish 12-2 in the Top 16 and sweep Maccabi<br />

Tel Aviv in the play<strong>of</strong>fs by 3-0. At the Final Four in<br />

Madrid, however, CSKA fell to Olympiacos Piraeus by<br />

68-70, while Fenerbahce Istanbul, coached by Obradovic,<br />

lost to host Real Madrid. Both coaches were to<br />

meet in the third place game that CSKA won 86-80.<br />

As fate would have it, however, they would meet in<br />

the championship game a year later at the 2016 Final<br />

Four in Berlin. CSKA won again, this time after overtime,<br />

by 101-96, giving Itoudis his first EuroLeague<br />

title as a head coach. The embrace between both<br />

friends was strong and true as they exchanged some<br />

words that will remain a secret. Both were also at the<br />

2017 Final Four in Istanbul and Belgrade in 2018, but<br />

they did not get to face each other.<br />

“I wouldn’t be here if it was not for Zeljko and Panathinaikos.<br />

I said I know how hard it is. I knew that one<br />

would win. It was CSKA and my staff. But he had a big,<br />

big, big, big part <strong>of</strong> what we have won. I felt that I had<br />

to say that to Zeljko. I thank him from my heart,” Itoudis<br />

said after winning the title in Berlin.<br />

As many others in the basketball world, Itoudis<br />

has great respect for the NBA, but he says we cannot<br />

copy everything on the other side <strong>of</strong> the Atlantic.<br />

“The NBA plays under the same rules, on the same<br />

terms. In Europe, we have many competition systems,<br />

and if on Thursday or Friday you play in Malaga and<br />

on Sunday or Monday you play in Krasnoyark, that’s<br />

12 hours on a plane and seven time zones. On the<br />

other hand, Panathinaikos and Olympiacos have trips<br />

inside Greece that can be 45 minutes at the longest.<br />

We also have different laws for taxes... The first thing<br />

we must do is fix, as much as possible, the conditions,<br />

and after that we can talk about salary caps, drafts<br />

and calendars,” Itoudis says.<br />

Dimitris Itoudis, 49, is one <strong>of</strong> the youngest many<br />

masters in this book. In 2016, he won the Alexander<br />

Gomelskiy Trophy as the coach <strong>of</strong> the year in the EuroLeague.<br />

He was the best in the VTB League three<br />

times, in 2015, 2017 and 2018. After five seasons at<br />

the helm in CSKA, he has won 150 games and lost just<br />

18 between the VTB regular season and play<strong>of</strong>fs. His<br />

career is still young, but it’s already filled with success<br />

and with a clear trend to improve his numbers <strong>of</strong> wins<br />

and trophies.<br />

A true basketball teacher.<br />

Dimitris Itoudis<br />

68 69<br />

<strong>31</strong> MASTERMINDS <strong>of</strong> EUROPEAN BASKETBALL<br />

I

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