Slick Rick now coaching the Greek Freak

[JasonEvans]

https://www.espn.com/olympics/basketball/story/_/id/28034020/rick-pitino-hired-greece-national-team-coach


Rick Pitino is taking over as Greek national team coach as the squad looks to qualify for the 2020 Olympics, he confirmed via Twitter on Friday.

Pitino told reporters Friday that he will begin coaching the team for the Olympic qualifying tournament in June. Greece will be one of 24 teams playing for four Olympic bids during the June 23-28 event.

"Obviously it's a great honor for me to accept this position, and I'm looking forward to it," Pitino said. "I'll spend most of the winter, once the brackets are announced, studying the film and we'll go to work."

Prior to accepting the job, the former Louisville coach told reporters earlier this week that he would work for free, calling it an "honor" to coach Greece.

[Acymetric]

Is he actually working for free, or was that just a figure of speech?

[left_hook_lacey]

Is he actually working for free, or was that just a figure of speech?

Figure of speech. Kind of like calling strippers "exotic dancers". 😂

[SupaDave]

https://www.espn.com/olympics/basketball/story/_/id/28034020/rick-pitino-hired-greece-national-team-coach

Proof that pro sports has no scruples...

[Billy Dat]

Based on what I saw this summer, with the previous Greece coach sitting Giannis during key stretches of games, a change needed to be made. The first order of business should be that Giannis plays a minimum of 35 minutes per game.

[awhom111]

After Rick's decent time with Panathinaikos last season, this seems like a pretty logical choice for all sides. He has familiarity with a number of the key players and the federation will be hoping that he can get some of the American-born players like Tyler Dorsey and Kosta Koufos (if he can still really play) on board this summer and in the future. Of course, Puerto Rico's idea that he would recruit mainland born players for them did not turn out very well, but it would be hard for him to do worse in this gig than that stint. I am surprised that he did not hold out for the Lithuania job so that he could coach his former player Lukas "Skywalker" Lekavicius again.

[awhom111]

This story got a lot more interesting today.

As some know, Pitino's first post-college job was in Greece at the club team Panathinaikos. He did not want a full time job this season unless it was in the United States, which is why he ended up taking the Greek job for next summer. Some may know that the Panathinaikos rivalry with Olympiakos is one of the most intense in the world as around 70% of people in Greece support one or the other. After Pitino was appointed, he apparently met with some national team level players from Olympiakos and assured them that he would be fair with the national team job and not rejoin struggling Panathinaikos. Recently he agreed to a two-year contract with them though (Jimmer and Pitino, the combination we never knew we wanted) and today those players announced that they are not planning on playing for the national team now.