{"id":53292,"date":"2025-08-08T16:28:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T16:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/53292\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T16:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T16:28:07","slug":"kostas-sloukas-my-wife-still-curses-me-for-not-going-to-real-and-losing-a-lot-of-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/53292\/","title":{"rendered":"Kostas Sloukas: “My wife still curses me for not going to Real and losing a lot of money”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Aris Barkas\/ barkas@eurohoops.net<\/a><\/p>\n

Kostas Sloukas<\/a> has emerged as one of the most divisive personalities in European basketball, but you can\u2019t deny his success, winning four EuroLeague trophies, including a masterpiece performance with Panathinaikos<\/a> in the 2024 Final Four.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why talking to a Greek football legend and former Atletico Madrid striker, Demis Nikolaidis, on a new podcast named \u201cDemis Dialogues\u201d has already created a lot of debates between Olympiacos<\/a> and Panathinaikos<\/a> fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe end of my career is near, and I want to stay in people\u2019s consciousness as a very good athlete, a player who broke his ceiling\u201d, he said about his legacy and explained a lot of details that were reported about him and his career choices.<\/p>\n

As he said about his return to Olympiacos<\/a> in 2020, which ended up being a race between his former team and Real Madrid<\/a>: \u201cThere was always a discreet message to my manager by Panathinaikos, that we want him and money is not an issue. We\u2019ve been talking for 15 years. I didn\u2019t even listen to Panathinaikos. It\u2019s a very big team, but I respected Olympiacos<\/a>. At the time, the team was playing by choice in the second division, and I said I would go back to Olympiacos<\/a> to help. Vasilis Spanoulis and Giorgos Printezis were near the end of their career. I also lost a lot of money to go to Olympiacos at the time. I had a very big offer from Real Madrid<\/a>. My wife still curses me for not going to Real and losing a lot of money. I had the challenge of going to a Final Four in the Euroleague with Olympiacos at the time\u201d.<\/p>\n

So, how did he end up leaving Olympiacos for Panathinaikos? \u201cOlympiacos didn\u2019t want me, and they let me leave in a bad way after three years. This is what happened. So I went to the opponents to show them they were wrong. I wouldn\u2019t have written history that well either. I scored 25 points in the Euroleague final and 30 in the last championship final. Fate treated me well\u201d.<\/p>\n

Speaking about the lost final to Real Madrid, Sloukas<\/a> added that even if the game was decided on the last shot, it\u2019s not only about being lucky in the closing seconds: \u201cI\u2019ve only discussed it with people close to me. In basketball, luck plays a role, but you create the conditions, where luck then favors either you or your opponent. Llull\u2019s basket that decided the Euroleague is indeed a lucky basket. Personalities always play a role, but you also create the conditions. Zeljko Obradovic<\/a> always said, in the last two minutes, never let the opponent score a three-pointer because it steals possession. In the Euroleague final, if I\u2019m not mistaken, Real has the ball with 45 seconds left. Olympiacos is ahead by four points. Rodriguez brings the ball down. If I remember correctly, Canaan goes under the screen and allows him to shoot a three-pointer. It\u2019s better to let him make a layup. We missed the next possession, so Real has the ball with 9 seconds. So for me, the game was lost earlier. When instead of Real making a two-pointer, they made a three-pointer\u201d.<\/p>\n

On a personal level, he added about his biggest moment: \u201cI think winning the Euroleague with Panathinaikos and the championship as it came was my greatest moment, because it was combined with a very big challenge. At my age, I recognize what I have to do, and I am saying that without diminishing the feat of winning the EuroLeague with Olympiacos and Fenerbahce<\/a>\u201c.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Aris Barkas\/ barkas@eurohoops.net Kostas Sloukas has emerged as one of the most divisive personalities in European basketball,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-53292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}