Dec 30, 2020 by Frankie Sachs, Euroleague.net Print
When head coach Dejan Radonjic leads Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade onto its home floor against Panathinaikos OPAP Athens in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Game of the Week on Wednesday, he might hope to take a page out of the Greens book.
Radonjic returns to the team with whom he made his EuroLeague debut, hoping to help ignite a Zvezda side that has lost six of its last seven games. In each of the past two seasons, his opponent tonight, Panathinaikos, made a mid-season coaching change and got spectacular results.
Hall of Famer Rick Pitino famously hopped on a plane on Christmas Day 2018 to fly to Athens and take the reins at Panathinaikos, which at that point was slumping through five losses in six games. He was new to European basketball and had little familiarity with his surroundings, but in Pitino s first game in charge, on December 28, Panathinaikos defeated that season s eventua