NBA: THE CHILDRESS´S SURPRISE (This article is available in English and Español)

Josh Childress is the name of recent days in the basketball´s world, as he has surprisingly decided not to continue his solid career in the NBA and he has become a new player of the Greek giant Olympiakos of Piraeus.

This signing is one of the more bizarre basketball´s stories that I have seen in a long time, because although Joshua Malik Childress, who was drafted number 6 by the Atlanta Hawks in 2004 NBA draft, is not a NBA´star, he is a very good and solid player, with a great future, after good seasons with the Atlanta Hawks and after good collegiate career at Stanford- he was named the 2003-04 Pac-10 Player of the Year Conference-. At Atlanta he has played 4 seasons and he always scored more than 10 points per game on average and 5 rebounds per game on average, being the 2006-07 season his best year, since he got 13 points, 6 rebounds and 2 assists per game on average-which is good-and beside we can not forget that he was the sixth best player in the NBA in Field-goal percentage last season (0,57).So, this 25 year´s old and 6-8 and 210 lbs guard-forward is a good player and he could be an important player in the NBA, but he took a decision and he wants an European adventure and he accepted the incredible Greek bid ($ 20 million after taxes) for the next 3 season. This player is another great acquisition for the Olympiakos, whose owner, the rich businessman Socratis Kokkalis-the Intracom´s owner (company, specialising in computer and defence system software development-, is building an ambitious and “luxurious” team, since we will see together players like for example Theo Papaloukas-the best European guard and maybe he is the best European player-, the Lithuanian Arvydas Macijauskas-one of the best scorers in Europe-, Josh Childress, Sofoklis Schortsanitis-the player, known as "Baby Shack", has already overcome his weight´s problems-and the superb Croatian center Nikola Vujcic. So it is an excellent team, especially if we bear in mind that the coach Panagiotis Giannakis will have on the bench players like for example Lynn Greer-he is great scorer-, the Hebrew Yotam Halperin-he is a prestigious player in Europe-or promising Zoran Erceg and Milos Teodosic.

In other words, great team and of course the Piraeus´s fans are very happy with the president´s labour, not as fans and media from Atlanta, who are very angry with the General Manager of the team Rick Sund, who is considered by the fans and the media as the worst executive of the NBA-we can say that he is the American Joan Laporta(FC Barcelona´s president),jeje- both for his general policy in recent years and for his Childress´s mismanagement, whose departure from Atlanta to Athens is treated by a lot of media like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution , whose journalist Sekou K Smith and Mark Bradley qualify the Josh Childress´departure as a shock and astonishing mistake by Hawks. From now on we will see what happens on one side in the Georgian team, whose GM must sign a good player to replace Josh and to reassure the fans, the media and the players of the team as Al Horford, who is upset with the Childress´ departure- Horford said:”Obvioysly I am not happy with it because I wanted him on my team…” and “I am disappointed about it because he is one of the guys that I really liked to play with.”. On the other hand, we must also be attentive to the movements in other important European teams and especially in the eternal rival of Olympiakos, Panathinaikos, whose owners, the millionaire brothers Thanasis and Pavlos Giannakopoulos, will try to counteract the Childress´s acquisition, with the arrival of a star to complement their great team.

Cheers,

J&F