The Triple Crown

Two words could describe Olympiacos’ 1997 basketball season: ‘fear’ and ‘paranoia’. The team that had seemed so lost at the start of the season went on to win the first triple crown ever in Greek basketball, then got to face off against the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan a few months later. Rivers, Tomic and Sigalas were first among equals on a roster overflowing with talent and personalities.

In the pantheon of sports stories that transcend the court to become part of our collective memory, the first 10 months of 1997 occupy a special place in the history of Olympiacos basketball. Besides, who could have imagined that just a few months after that afternoon in the indoor arena in the Sikies district of Thessaloniki, when the Reds suffered a monumental defeat at the hands of bottom-of-the-league VAO (80-79, Feb. 15, 1997), Olympiacos would be taking on Jordan’s Bulls in the McDonald’s tournament as champions of Europe.

This game was and remains the team’s “sweetest” defeat (104-78, Oct. 18, 1997) and brought to an unofficial end the cycle that had begun as the team began to take shape in the early 1990s; the team which, apart from winning the triple crown in 1997, had built an empire of its own with five consecutive championships, two Greek Cups, and iconic players who still occupy pride of place in fans’ lists of GOATs, and deservedly so.

The highlight of Milan Tomic’s career, and of Olympiacos basketball, captured on film. October 1997 at the McDonald’s Open in Paris against Michael Jordan and the NBA champions, the Chicago Bulls.

Let’s start with a player who was absent from the Bulls game: David Rivers. While his arrival in Piraeus in 1995 may have been met with skepticism rather than a red carpet and drum rolls, especially since he would be taking over the reins from players like Žarko Paspalj and Eddie Johnson, it would ultimately be Rivers who led Olympiacos to the “Promised Land” just 18 months later, with victory in the Euroleague and the first triple crown in Greek basketball history.

Rivers wasn’t just a leader. He was the catalyst for a cultural shift shaped by Ioannidis’ departure and Dúšan Ívkovič’s arrival on the Piraeus bench. And Rivers was there, ready to receive the first pass and gallop over the court, embodying and articulating the team’s dream on court. He took Olympiacos by the hand and played his magnum opus for the F4 in Rome.

In the semi-final against Olimpija Ljubljana, he scored 28 points. In the final against Barcelona, he scored 26, but his contribution can’t be measured in stats alone, because he was the heart and soul of the final. And when victory came, it was so much more than simply Olympiacos’ first European cup. It was confirmation that a Greek team could compete at the highest level with style, depth and character.

Rivers’ performance marked him out as the top scorer in the tournament; naturally, it also turned him into the Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the F4. So, when his two-year contract expired in the summer of 1997, and he failed to find common ground with the Olympiacos management during their negotiations, Rivers moved to Italy to continue his career at Fortitudo Bologna. That’s why he missed out on the chance to take on Jordan.

But it wasn’t a solo effort from Rivers that made 1997 the most iconic of years for Olympiacos The decision to play him alongside Milan Tomic, which the Reds tried out late in the season, also left its mark. Rivers with his speed, power and dynamism, his ability to read the game, and Tomic with his composure and absolute understanding of the rhythm, formed a duo that struck the perfect balance between talent and discipline.

They brought two worlds together: American passion for the game and European technical precision. Their collaboration embodies a chemistry that is based not in numbers but in striking the perfect balance of looks, off-the-ball movements and intuition. Rivers was the throttle, Tomic the steering wheel. Together, they were the V16 engine of an Olympic team that changed up a gear.

Tomic wore the red-and-white strip for 13 years (1991-2004) and was always there, a loyal soldier, from the Club’s rebirth through to Olympiacos’ domination of Greek basketball, but also during the difficult “Korydallos” years. Even when he was asked to exchange his player’s shorts for a coach’s suit overnight, he went right ahead and did it, even though Olympiacos was going through the worst period in its history.

David Rivers leads a well-rounded team with the speed of American basketball and the maturity of a European superpower. Here, charging at the Barcelona basket in the final.

And beside Tomic, Olympiacos had a player who had achieved iconic status in Greek basketball: Giorgos Sigalas. The Olympiacos captain, the player who believed in the miracle ahead before anyone else, and the man who yelled the legendary “That’s the first! There’ll be more” at the award ceremony for the Greek Cup in March 1997.

With his imposing defense, fierce commitment and moral integrity, he was a leading voice on and off the court. It was Sigalas who maintained the crucial balance between individual excellence and collective commitment, ensuring that the personalities in the team—players of the caliber of Fasoulas, Tarlać, Rivers, Tomic and of course himself—came together and reached the very top.

Sigalas was the voice of the team’s time-outs. He was the one who stepped up when the going got tough, the first to run back into defense, and the last to surrender. He was an example to be emulated for the younger members of the team, and a major headache for Olympiacos’ opponents. If Rivers provided the momentum, Sigalas provided the stamina. But despite all that, he too would leave for Italy at the end of that season—transferred to Stefanel Milano. Although he had been with the Reds since 1990, he didn’t accept an offer from the Olympiacos management to renew their cooperation. Making him the second key absence from the Bulls game.

Whatever happened, 1997 was and remains a landmark year and the image of David Rivers running the length of the court in a frantic coast-to-coast encapsulates the memory of it perfectly.

A few months after the Club reached the very pinnacle of Europe, in October 1997, Olympiacos traveled to Paris for the McDonald’s Championship. There, the team took on the most iconic force in the NBA: Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. 104-78 in the Bulls’ favor was the predictable result, but it wasn’t really the point. The crucial thing was that, for the first time, a Greek team had taken on the basketball legend.

Getting to mark Jordan, Pippen, Kukoč was an incredible experience, granted, but it was more than that. Panagiotis Fasoulas has said that sharing a court with Jordan was more than an honor; it was a lesson in discipline and style. And Dúšan Ívkovič, cooler but equally impressed, noted that the speed at which the Bulls played couldn’t be taught, just experienced.

It was a match that confirmed how far Olympiacos had come, but also how much further it could go. The team’s gradual break-up in 1997 left a big “what if” in the history of Olympiacos basketball, but not about its leading role in European basketball, because that was a given now. No, the question was whether “the Korydallos years”—shorthand for the department’s mounting decline, especially in 2002-2005—could have been avoided.