Olympiacos 101-96 PAOK: A Night of MVPs and a 46-Three-Point Crack

On the night of the Greek Super Cup final, the scoreboard told the whole story before the clock even ran out: Olympiacos 101, PAOK 96. The lead once stretched to 21 points in the middle of the second half, then shrank to a single possession. But looking only at the scoreline means missing the most interesting part. PAOK attempted 46 three-pointers in this game, making 19 of them, a 41% clip. A reigning EuroLeague champion allowing an opponent 46 long-range attempts in a cup final is a fact that demands dissection, not applause.

Let me be clear: the analytical source I am using here is Olympiacos' own club blog, not a neutral wire service. Every figure such as 19/46 or 25 points and 10 rebounds needs cross-checking against the official box score. The tone of that blog leans heavily toward Olympiacos, so I automatically discount the emotion when reading it. I have followed European basketball since the years when I recorded indices by hand, and the principle remains the same: trust the data, but verify the person delivering it.

Context: a small trophy, two large signals

The Greek Super Cup is a single-game format, usually serving as a season opener. As a title it is light. As information it is heavier than people assume, because it is the first time teams unveil their real rosters against real opponents, with points and a trophy at stake.

Olympiacos entered as reigning European champion. PAOK did not show up to be a backdrop. Before this game they beat Olimpia Milano, beat Partizan, then edged Panathinaikos in a tense semifinal. Three EuroLeague opponents, three meaningful results. In the Greek league, people still call Olympiacos and Panathinaikos the eternal pair, two powers sharing the top. PAOK is knocking on that door.

Looking toward Vietnam, this is a worthwhile slice. We tend to remember only the champion and forget the third and fourth places. But the health of a league lies in whether the third team dares to topple the first in a single game.

Analysis: Olympiacos' scoring machine

Olympiacos won this game through a very specific mechanism: mismatch hunting. They did not run a complex system to create space from the start. They waited for the opposing defense to expose an imbalance, then attacked it directly. Sasha Vezenkov was the chief executor, attacking every mismatch PAOK revealed, without mercy.

The question worth asking is why PAOK exposed so many. They lost Gray and Chougkaz in the frontcourt, forcing them to push Osman, Persidis, even Calathes down to the four. That is small-ball by circumstance, not small-ball by design. A small lineup born of necessity rotates more slowly, helps later, and creates exactly the mismatches Olympiacos needed.

Individually, three stat lines stood out that night. Vezenkov: 25 points, 10 rebounds, a line worthy of an MVP. Evan Fournier: 19 points, precisely the profile of a shooter who rises when a title hangs in front of him. Jean Montero: 20 points, including 6 in the final minute, alongside 3 turnovers.

But my favorite detail is not any single line. Olympiacos has four players who can generate an offensive solution: Vezenkov, Fournier, Montero, McIntyre. Modern basketball talks a lot about systems, but systems dissolve when the clock shows 24 seconds and nobody wants the ball. A team with four handlers eases that pressure enormously. This is their most positive signal, and it will retain value when the season reaches the knockout rounds.

Conversely, the worrying detail sits on the other half of the floor. In the second half PAOK shot the lights out. The most reasonable explanation is that Olympiacos chose to protect the rim first. Hall and N'Diaye dominated the paint, pushing PAOK outside. In principle that is the right choice: protect the close-range percentage, accept the long-range attempts. But 46 three-point attempts exceeds the threshold of acceptance. Perhaps Olympiacos is helping too deep in the paint. Perhaps their closeouts are half a beat late. Both are fixable, and both must be fixed.

Contrarian angle: the fuse sits with Montero

Fans are calling Olympiacos "insatiable." With Vezenkov and Fournier, that label is deserved: one is a cornerstone, the other a big-shot maker, both proven at continental level.

Montero is different. He just had his first 20-point game in these colors, scored 6 in the final minute, and the story spread fast. But I have to be blunt: this conclusion is built on one game. In my valuation work, a one-game sample is only enough to open a tracking line, not to close an evaluation. The positive signals lie elsewhere: first-step speed, change-of-direction ability, composure under pressure, things that are very hard to teach. The concern lies in the 3 turnovers. For a playoff team, a lead guard's turnovers are the most directly punishable error type.

The first step of a number-counter is admitting he cannot count everything. One Super Cup game cannot tell you who Montero is after 40 games.

Olympiacos' real problem, in my view, is not any shooter. It is the perimeter defense, and it repeated across all four Super Cup games and the friendlies. Coach Bartzokas has publicly pointed this out. When a reigning European champion admits a three-point-line defensive hole, EuroLeague opponents will hear it. A season is a long string of games, and in elite basketball, systemic errors are punished more slowly than people expect, but more surely.

Let me tell an old story of mine. Mbappe scored, while I was studying my own mistake. Years ago, I cut a young player from my investment list purely because of a bias about age. That night I rewatched the tape until 3 a.m., then publicly admitted the error within 48 hours. I am not telling this to show off bravery. I am telling it to say that I recognize the smell of over-reading a single game, and that smell is easily mistaken for the smell of discovery.

There is one more personnel point few noticed. Bryant Dunston's signature at age 41 is not meant to score points. Twenty-seven files on the table, and what I smelled was not risk, but tomorrow. Olympiacos brought Dunston in as a father figure in the locker room, a culture role rather than a playing role. Moreover, he can obtain a Greek passport because his wife is Greek, which would convert him from a foreign player into a domestic one under the league's quota. This is a valuable lever: it frees a foreign-player slot for the main rotation and reinforces the interior at once. Alongside him came the signature of George Papas, a national-team guard who previously wore Olympiacos colors. Both moves address a long season with two competitions and many injuries. Milutinov and Jones are already absent. A thin frontcourt is the team's biggest risk, and they are buying insurance against it.

For Vietnamese observers, this is a lesson in reading passports and domestic quotas. In leagues like the VBA or V-League, a domestic slot sometimes decides a championship without anyone noticing. A club's entire financial equation can revolve around one citizenship certificate.

Progressive takeaway

Olympiacos remains the strongest team in both the continental and domestic arenas. But the way they won this game shows that advantage is no longer absolute in any single game. In a long playoff series, depth and balance win. In a one-off game, an opponent's three-point variance is the biggest enemy of a team with the better roster.

What is worth tracking, come March when the tape gets thick, is whether Olympiacos can fix its closeouts beyond the three-point line. A European champion does not need to win by luck. They need to win by structure. And their three-point defensive structure, tonight, has a crack.