Žarko Paspalj – The Forerunner

Let’s start win an objective truth: the Olympiacos basketball team of 1991 was not the Club we know today. It didn’t exude the aura, the dominance, the inevitability of victory. It was not even one of the “greats” of Greek basketball. The sport

at that time in Greece was essentially a trilogy revolving around the extraordinary Nikos Galis and his high-flying Aris Thessaloniki team, along with the nagging question of “why can’t we beat the Yugoslavs” in basketball.

It’s then that, almost out of nowhere, a talented Yugoslav player arrives. Not just anyone, but a player so ahead of his time that Greek basketball of that era didn’t even have the terminology to describe what he did on the court.

Paspalj wasn’t just good, he was the one who brought a leap of progress to the local game. He was the highlight reel for an Olympiacos that would follow, as he peaked during a time when most fans still saw basketball as a one-on-one game.

At 2.06 meters tall, he would run the court like a playmaking guard and shoot like he had a personal contract with the God of basketball himself. Most importantly, he played with speed that no one in Greek basketball was ready to match at the time. The great Galis was the ultimate point-scoring machine, but he was more static. Paspalj was endless motion.

To understand what Zarko Paspalj means to Olympiacos, you have to look at the environment that greeted him. Olympiacos wasn’t even a team that was close to dominating its opponents. It was a team you didn’t want to go to if you were a serious professional. Paspalj, however, took up the challenge.

That’s a chapter in his career that has never been emphasized enough. When Zarko decided to sign for the Reds he did so with a team that gave him absolutely no guarantee for his future. He could have gone anywhere he wanted. He had just played in the Final Four with Partizan Belgrade. He was 25 years old and in his prime, meaning he had all his options open.

Yet he went to Olympiacos. In essence, he was among the first to believe in the idea of a “great Olympiacos”. Before the team itself, its fans and even president Socrates Kokkalis. Zarko apparently saw something that didn’t exist. He made it exist.

At 2.06 meters tall, he would run the court like a guard and shoot like he had a personal contract with the God of basketball himself

Free throws: the Achilles Heel

In referring to Paspalj, the “elephant in the room” that you can’t ignore is his … less than spectacular free throw percentage. Basketball is one of the few sports where even the greatest athlete can have such a pronounced weakness in a facet of his game without the latter impacting his overall performance at the end of the day. Imagine if Pele was a poor passer, or if Roger Federer couldn’t serve well. But in basketball, Zarko could do almost anything on the court, except make free throws as consistently as a top pro should.

April 21, 1994, in Tel Aviv. Olympiacos is playing in its first Euroleague final. If you close your eyes and try to imagine the perfect upset, this is it. Here’s a team with no history in the top European competition, its fans waiting for a moment of greatness, and a player who had come to change everything.

Here’s where reality got in the way of a fairy-tale ending. The game against Joventut Badalona was a slow-burning affair. It was a game that was so slow, stressful and confined that every attack felt like a test of survival. Paspalj, the absolute leader of Olympiacos on the court, should have been the man of the night. Instead, he became the symbol of a colossal, missed opportunity. The scorecard later read: two out of 12 free throws on the night. That’s an atrocious 16.6%.

At the end of the game, the score was 57-59, with the Spanish side ahead. Just one more bucket from a good choice on offense and possibly Euroleague history would have been written differently that evening. Nevertheless, basketball, as practically every other sport, is based on “hypothetical” situations.

Badalona was crowned as Europe’s champions that night and Olympiacos returned to Greece defeated. Zarko unwittingly became the “hero” of a failure that was ultimately the first step towards future glory.

Ask any Olympiacos fan today about the 1990s and the first name mentioned will be the player who …didn’t lift the trophy. It’s the player who showed the team that they could win it all. Afterall, it’s not always the titles that define the legends. It’s the moments, and the moment when Paspalj clutched his head after his 10th missed free throw emerged as a more poignant moment than any trophy of the time.

The free throw line is often unforgiving. For Zarko, the “charity shot” turned into a nightmare one night in Tel-Aviv.

A departure before the ultimate glory

Olympiacos eventually won the Euroleague in 1997. Zarko, however, wasn’t there. It’s one of the biggest ironies in Greek basketball that the player who started the Reds’ basketball “revolution” didn’t get to play on the team that won the European trophy. He wasn’t there in the physical sense, but his legacy was.

Without Zarko, the great Olympiacos team coached by Dusan Ivkovic and with “marquee” players like David Rivers and Dragan Tarlats on its roster may not have materialized. Zarko first instilled the mentality of “we’re coming for everything”. He was a forerunner of the today’s era, where Olympiacos doesn’t just show up to play, but aims to dominate.

Paspalj didn’t lift that European trophy, but the Olympiacos team that did was, in fact, a continuation of Zarko’s Olympiacos.

In the end, the question arises: What did Paspalj mean for Olympiacos? For many, he was “ground zero”, the beginning of its most glorious chapter.

Even today, when Olympiacos fans talk about the Club’s basketball greats, Zarko is always a reference point. Not for the titles he won, but because without him there would be no future titles and Cups.

If that’s not success, then what is?