Rick Pitino is back in coaching. The former Louisville head coach has been searching for a way back into basketball since he was fired in 2017, but he hasn’t had any luck in the states. As a result, Pitino will head across the Atlantic to Europe and coach in Greece.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Pitino has agreed to become the head coach of Panathinaikos a Euro League powerhouse that last won the Euroleague championship in 2011. It will be looking for a return to form under Pitino, but it will be interesting to see how much success there is for a coach that has only coached at the college and NBA levels. Never in Europe. Pitino is expected to start shortly after Christmas.
A formal agreement is expected soon, sources told ESPN. Pitino is expected to travel to Athens and coach his first game shortly after Christmas. Pitino's goal has remained to return to the NBA, and this deal's term will be for the rest of the season. https://t.co/vkxwsMK9tS
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 20, 2018
Panathinaikos is trying to get back to its winning ways. It currently has started the year struggling and according to Wojnarowski it will fire current coach Xavi Pascual to hire Pitino. He will be walking into an interesting situation. He has a lot of former NBA players on his roster, but he’ll be working for an owner that can best be described as “volcanic.”
Panathinaikos has started 6-7 in the EuroLeague, leaving the team in 10th place. The team’s owner, Dimitrios Giannakopoulos, has a volcanic reputation in Europe. He was fined $150,000 Euros in 2015 for barging into the referee’s room and threatening to kill the officials and their families — after a playoff victory over CSKA Moscow.
Panathinaikos’ roster includes Nick Calathes, Georgios Papagiannis, Keith Langford, Deshaun Thomas, James Gist and the older brother of Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, Thanasis.
Pitino last coached in 2017 before he was fired at Louisville due to investigations by the FBI into college basketball. These investigations have essentially removed Pitino from coaching at the college level anytime in the near future as he has a permanent mark on him that isn’t going to go away.
Pitino briefly coached in the NBA without much success with the Knicks and Celtics. He is still angling to get a position in the Association next year, as Woj notes, but his age and mediocre results in the NBA don’t make him exactly a top candidate. Pitino did tell ESPN that he is just looking for a coaching position and nothing more which could help his case to get a job in the future. Almost all of his previous head coaching positions featured him with major control of team operations.
“I’m not looking for any of that (power/control) at this stage of my life,” Pitino told ESPN recently. “I want to develop teams and develop players and build a winner. I value analytics. I want to fit into an organization. At this stage, that’s all I’m interested in.”
Pitino was one of the most successful coaches in all of college basketball and accrued a record of 647 wins and 392 losses throughout his career. He won two NCAA championships, one at Kentucky and one at Louisville.
