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Panathinaikos’ AKTOR beat Bologna as usual and Vassilis Skoundis explains how Gerryan Grant absolutely confirmed his (magnificent) surname.
It seems that fate has it and it is written in the kismet of Panathinaikos AKTOR that every time he visits Bologna to face Virtus he will need a big shot to do his job beautifully and pastorally, and sometimes triumphantly…
On May 5, 2002, in the final of the EuroLeague Final Four with the host Kinder (89-83), Ibrahim Kutluai put it fifty seconds before the end, one the prisoner…
Grigonis, Nan and Grant’s parquet floor
On March 29, 2024, (this big shot) went in twice: first by Marius Grigonis who with a “and one” tied it with 32 seconds left to follow Kendrick Nunn’s layup for the 81-79 heroics.
The good thing happened last night (15/11) except that the current offender didn’t just make the big shot, but he did everything and I daresay that when the final horn sounded he even took the floor cleaner to clean the floor from its remains … his rage!
His name is Gerian Grant and he followed in the footsteps of his namesake, Northern general in the American Civil War and later president of the United States, Ulysses Grant…
The Odysseus that Panathinaikos AKTOR needed to find his Ithaca a la Bolognese became his eloquent!
The 120 ecstatic seconds
When the match between the two teams entered the soul-destroying process of “crunch time» the son of Harvey Grant and the first nephew of the four-time NBA champion, Horace Grant entered another sphere, namely where ecstasy borders on moonshine!
I mean that, but more than I did the so-called who managed to turn the thriller into “one man show» and to bury in the bowels of PalaMalaguti the dreams of the team from Emilia Romagna…
In an impressive and exciting relay race that highlighted him as the epitome of “clutch player” and of “gamef inisher“, the American guard “wrote” a steal by Sengelia, a three-pointer, an assist to Sluka, a defensive rebound after Belinelli’s missed shot and 2/2 shots from Cordinier’s foul shot!
Wow!
Atlas who kept the shepherds
The exclamation point is allowed, not forced, because Grant did all of this in two minutes and nine seconds, under the pressure exerted by the home team and while he himself was not only motivated by his talent and passion, but and from the need to keep the pastures…
He had, you know, in those final and crucial moments to become the mythological Atlas who would lift a team in his hands, absent Lorenzo Brown, with Kostas Sluka showing signs of fatigue and with Kendrick Nunn charged with four fouls and obliged ( in the context of the handball logic chosen by Ergin Ataman) to make a shift from attack on defense and tumbling with Panagiotis Kalaitzakis.
Artificial intelligence and Holliday’s bodyguard
Grant there, standing in his bastion to do all the work on both ends of the court, with a crystal clear mind and with such vital movements that if we didn’t know he was a normal human we would mistake him for a robotic product of artificial intelligence.
After Kutluai, Grigonis and Nunn, Grant not only signed, stamped, postscripted and sealed the seven-time champions of Europe’s seventh win in 10 games this season (and the fifth in the last six matches), but also showed if they wear his who and justified his premura last year Dimitris Giannakopoulou to send him a subito to put a new figure.
Grant is not a prima donna and a superstar, but his presence is one of the indispensable conditions for the smooth operation and all the good things that happen at Panathinaikos.
Spit on Holliday!
“Who you look like, baby, who you look like“, as Lambros Konstandaras wondered while observing Thanasis Vengos in the film “I will make you queen“…
Konstadaras was slow to find that Vengos looked like a bartender in Minnesota…
Again, I say that according to the EuroLeague and proportionality, Grant is the spitting image of Jrue Holliday of the Celtics!
The point G and the old sieve
The Greens, therefore, defeated Bologna, which is famous for its three tau: next to “tortellini” (tortellini), the “torri” (towers) and the “tette” (female breasts), yesterday a G was added, which – with sympathy for the sexist implication – became the erogenous G spot of the act!
In Tuesday’s game against Maccabi, Ergin Ataman found his new sieve with the simultaneous and extremely productive (24 points with 5/7 two-pointers, 4/8 three-pointers, 2/3 shots, nine rebounds, three assists, two steals and only a mistake) presence of Juancho Hernangometh and Jedy Osman in the five, but yesterday “yok“, as they say on the other side of the Aegean Sea!
Yesterday when the Spaniard and the Turk were left in the shallows producing just 4+0 points, the three-time European champion returned to the factory settings with the three-guard formation, which of course suffered from the prelude and at the same time involved risk, due to the understaffing caused by the in Brown’s absence, aside from the foul trouble faced by Nunn and Slukas.
Kalaitzakis and the three-pointers
And what about this?
Kalaitzakis came on at the end of the match, who deserves honorable mention because, being “cold”, he stole a ball from Cordinier and responded fully to “you go, you come» with Nan.
Panathinaikos did himself a disservice in the last seconds of the first half, when from two shorthanded attempts he saw the hosts reduce to three points (43-46) and shorten his excellent three-point performance by one point (9/14) .
Hard rock and “enoughso”
The problems worsened in the second half when the Greens missed nine of their next eleven shots from 6m75 and saw Virtus edge 65-64 for the first time since trailing 28-27 and the match turned into a tight one. rock!
In the very next click, Matias Lessor took action and with two consecutive baskets “wrote” the score 68-71, Achile Polonara tied the score at 72-72 and “enoughsomething“, as the Italians say!
This “enough already” roared Grant who proudly shouldered the weight of the great responsibility back and forth and the rest is now History…
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