2006 FIBA World Basketball Championship will be remembered with Spain’s first title at this stage. But people like the romantic fairytales about the underdogs who go all the way against stronger opponents. This case is the same, but Greece couldn’t win the title, becoming runners-up.
The competition was hosted in Japan. 24 teams qualified for the FIBA World Championship, separated in 4 groups. The Greek team was in Group “C” and had to play against Turkey, Lithuania, Australia, Brazil and Qatar. It was obvious that Greece will qualify for the knock-out stage, because 4 of the 6 teams in the group had to go through. In addition, Greece had very good basketball players, who won the EuroBasket 2005.
Firstly, Greece beat 84-64 Qatar, which was predicted to be their easiest game in the tournament. And then the real tests for the 2005 European champions started. The Greek team won after overtime (81-76) against Lithuania, which meant that they will surely go through to the 1/8 finals. They gained the needed confidence and were lucky to beat Australia by only 3 points difference (72-69). Then, Greece had no problems, winning against Brazil (91-80) and Turkey (76-69), finishing at the top of their group with 5 victories of 5 matches.
At the 1/8 finals Greece met China, in which squad was the NBA star Yao Ming. But the only feeling he had after the game was frustration. Greece won by 31 points difference (95-64)! Well, that’s now self-confidence! Papaloukas was the top scorer of the game, finishing with 19 points. Yao Ming ended with just 10 points, which showed how strong really is the Greece defence.
Greece didn’t struggle against France at the quarter finals. The Hellenes won 73-56, giving no chance to the French team to go through the semi-finals. Greece made their impact on the game in the last quarter (20-13) when they decided the match in their favour.
Guess who was waiting at the semi-finals. That’s right! The United States were unbeaten so far (7 victories till the match against Greece) and they were, of course, the title favourites. But the impossible happened that day. Greece won 101-95 against the United States. Greeks’ tough play in defence and infallible shooting led to the greatest victory in the history of the team. Vassillis Spanoulis and Dimitris Diamantidis were simply brilliant in that game. Carmello Anthony was the best for the United States, scoring 25 points, but that was quite not enough. I haven’t seen the American players missing so many chances to score…
That’s how Greece reached the final game. They had to play against Spain and maybe they were too tired after the most difficult match against the USA. Greece didn’t play at the same level against the Spaniards and were smashed 47-70. Sometimes the end of the fairytale isn’t happy.
