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| HOW COULD GALIS BE UNBEATABLE, EVEN BEING THAT SHORT?
Only few people in Greece by then (basketball specialists), could understand and appreciate his game, and those people were simply amazed from what they were seeing: Galis was an incredible offensive player, who had only one thing in mind, before shooting the ball: To achieve his best jump (about 80-90 centimetre) in every shot he made, just before releasing the ball. Then, as far as concerning his hands, his way of releasing the ball would always depend on the situation and he had three of them: The first way was the classic one. A strong jump shot, shooting the ball straight to the basket. The second one made it almost impossible for the defender to block the ball: First jumping as high as it gets, then bringing the ball behind his head and releasing it, giving it an incredible curved route (most of the times he also used the board to shoot the ball even higher) . The third way was simply unstoppable and was actually Galis' trademark: Again jumping to the sky, and then making up to three manovres (depending on the situation again) using his back while flying, and shooting using one or two hands. Galis, taking advantage of his endless talent, optimised those three techniques, trying to overcome the disadvantage of him, being short (only 1.83, 6,1 feet). Using these techniques and combining them with his equally worked out body and superb foot work, he made it impossible to any defender to block him, if Galis was aware of him. On the other hand, even if his game was similar to the kind of game power forwards usually perform, using his NCAA heritage (he was a point guard there), he also had an incredible crossover dribble and amazing passing skills. By the time Galis was dominant in europe, the elements mentioned above were owned by only one more player. By Drazen Petrovic, who was a good friend of his. |
| SO, LETS PLAY BASKETBALL!
These elements were shown to the greek fans by Galis several times in the 1980-81 season, when he averaged 43,9 ppg with an extraordinary 65% of his shots hitting the target. By then, he did things that he later chose to remove from his basketball repertoire, such as dunking. Galis would shoot the ball under all circumstances, being totally confident of not missing a single shot. He score 62 points against Ionikos Nikeas, 61 against Iraklis and 57 against Carrera Venezia. He was still a king without a crown though, until the summer of 83, when he won the greek championship with Aris for the first time. That was to be the beginning of the "Yellow" dynasty. Galis against PAOK, Panathinaikos, Olympiakos, playing next to Panayotis Yannakis and being coached by Yannis Ioannidis. In the same time, Aris introduced a new style in the greek arenas and along with the tv revolution, led basketball in Greece in a whole new reality. Galis lost two titles in 1984 though, but since then, he won everything. The years to come with Aris, were totally successful for Nick. He won 6 consecutive greek championships and winning 80 games in a row his team-mates. He was the top scorer of the league for every single year, shooting incredibly well and giving his fans some attractive performances that made people question themselves: " Is he human, is he a robot, is he a machine, a superman, a god, or even a "GANGSTER"? |
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