Legend has it that in 1983, while touring North Carolina in Greece, Nick Galis had planted 50 points on the head of Michael Jordan. “I had scored a lot of points, but I can’t remember the details” he explained in May 2013 when Salonika paid homage to him. “You know, we changed a lot in defense…”
The fact remains that Galis will finish as the tournament’s top scorer, and that Jordan will be elected MVP. “I did not expect to meet such a strong player in attack, especially in Greece” react Jordan after their duel.
Forty years later, Jordan is considered the best player of all time, and Galis is his equal in the hearts of the Greeks, perhaps even the greatest sportsman in the history of Greece, and tonight the Federation profit from the arrival of Slovenia by Luka Doncic to show him respect. On the European level, he remains today the best scorer in the history of the European championship with an incredible average of 32 points.
Yet Galis was not born in Greece. Son of Greek immigrants, he was born in 1957 in New Jersey, and did not set foot in Greece until 1979. Before that, this 1m85 back-scorer wreaked havoc in American high schools, then at Seton Hall. To the point of finishing 3rd best scorer in the NCAA during his senior year. In front of him, a certain Larry Bird…
The two men were also drafted the same year, by Boston. Except that Galis will never play in the NBA… The Celtics who had selected him in the 4th round of the draft did not offer him a contract, and Galis then turned to the country of his parents, Greece.
Drafted by the Celtics the same year as Larry Bird
He arrived in 1979 at Aris Salonika, a club that he completely transformed to the point of making it one of the best in Europe (8 league titles, and 3 Final Four). A formidable striker, Galis defied the giants with his technique and his aggressiveness. It’s very simple, no defender managed to stop him, and the French clubs were tearing their hair out against him. In front of their screens or in the stands, supporters of Aris’ opponents hated him, like perhaps no other player at the time.
However, Galis was not very tall, did not necessarily have great athletic qualities, but his technique and his address allowed him to ignore the counterattacks, and to collect ten faults per match. And that was annoying…
“I had the feeling that if Galis had decided to score, he scored” confided one day Arvydas Sabonis, another basketball legend of the 80s and 90s.
To give an idea of Galis’ level, just take a look at this chart with his career point averages:
| Competition | Matches | Points | Mean |
| Championship | |||
| Greece Cup | |||
| European Cup | |||
| National team | |||
| Totals |
(via Wikipedia)
It’s very simple, under the colors of Aris, Galis will always shoot at 30 points and more, from 1979 to 1992. Yes, at 35, Galis was still shooting at 32 points on average in one of the highest in Europe.
European champion by scoring 40 points in the final
In fact, his average will drop when he joins Pana for the last three seasons of his career. With tears in his eyes when he left Aris (the club wanted him to become a coach…), Galis became at 35 the highest paid Greek player in history (1 million dollars per year). In Athens, he will score less, will still not win the Euroleague, but will prove that he was not just a simple scorer by finishing as the best passer in the Euroleague.
If Galis has therefore never managed to win a European Cup, on the other hand, he will succeed in placing Greece at the top of Europe. It will be in 1987, on his land, in a Euro disputed in a mind-blowing atmosphere.
Nick Galis ends his career on a whim
With an average of 37 pts in the competition, Galis went from feat to feat, and he saved the best for last by planting 40 points against the USSR for a 103-101 victory against the vice-world champions. By his side, as at Aris, the precious Giannakis, who later became a coaching legend. Two years later, the two friends will bring back a silver medal from Yugoslavia, largely beaten in the final by the band of Drazen Petrovic. The late “Mozart of basketball” will have this good word about his opponent: “If I am the son of the devil, Galis is the devil himself”.
Now 66 years old, and inducted into the Hall Of Fame in 2017, Nick Galis remains a living legend in Greece, and his end of career says a lot about the character of the man. While his coach at Pana (and in selection the year of the European title) tape him on the bench for half-time at the start of the season, Galis catches him at the break, and asks him for an explanation.
Apart, Politis then explains to him that he is taking advantage of this match against a poorly ranked player to play the youngsters, and that if Galis does not accept him, he can stay in the locker room during the second half. Galis then packed his bag, and never played basketball again. “Some took it as a whim on my part, but it drove me crazy. So I left. »
Visual : Greek USA Reporter
