Rockets Legend™ Vassilis “Billy” Spanoulis announces his retirement

I was 18 and honestly there's nothing to remember.

We brought over a potential star that required some mentorship, demanded that he play a very specific way, gave him minimum minutes and no time to adjust to a different league with different spacing and rules. The front office tried to nickel and dime him (Fertitta faints) and Jeff Van Gundy constantly reminded him that he was a rookie and flexed at him in practice and to the media.

Sounds like a recipe for... what it was.

It's possible that Ademan or another coach could've gotten more out of him but that was a weird time when the NBA hadn't quite transitioned from plodding big men and inefficient ISO guards to a more pace and space style.

He shot poorly, turned it over a lot, played bad defense, and was disgruntled right off the bat.

We traded him for Scola though!

Too bad we never got to see the same thing happen with Sergio Llull!

 

He was like the T-Mac of Greece. T-Mac was like the Zach Lavine of the 2000s. The 2000s were like the 2030s of the 1990s.

 

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

DD

 

rip legend v-gene

started from the bottom..

 

Broke AF Tilman can’t afford to do that!

 

We all do, sorta.

 

Good summary. He was a bad enough perimeter shooter that Rafer Alston was an undeniably superior shooter. @DaDakota used to love to reference Spanoulis’ superior 2P% though!

 

I hated RAFER as a player, still do, just never thought he would play well enough to compete - wanted VSpan to get a good long look, never did - and he played sporadically.

Was MORE than happy to get Scola though - that is one of my top Rockets of all time.

DD

 

Look, if you have to ride a bike or, worse, take METRO? It's not like we're talking about Clutch here.