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