Rick Pitino arrives in Greece to begin coaching job at Panathinaikos.
“I have signed with Panathinaikos and I am ready for the challenge,” Pitino told Eurohoops.net. “… I’m excited to be here. It’s the first time in 41 years as a coach that I will take up a team in the middle of the season.”
Pitino’s new team Panathinaikos has a game scheduled for Friday, and Pitino noted upon arrival that he had a practice scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
Word got out last week about Pitino’s opportunity and interest in the coaching job with the pro team in Greece. He told the Louisville Courier Journal at the time that he would finalize his decision after speaking with family, though it sounded like a formality.
“I miss coaching terribly,” Pitino said. “I still have a lot of bitterness toward Louisville and to the Southern District of New York, and I think this will make it go away quite a bit.”
Pitino tweeted Monday thanking team owner Dimitris Giannakopoulos for the “unique opportunity” and that he was “fired up to help.”
The Greek club’s roster includes former Florida guard Nick Calathes, former Ohio State forward Deshaun Thomas and former Kansas guard Keith Langford.
Pitino’s goal is to return to the NBA as a head coach, and his hope is that the Panathinaikos job can be a steppingstone to achieving that.
Pitino recently told ESPN that he hoped for an opportunity to return to the NBA as a coach. He has been radioactive among NBA and major college basketball programs since his scandalous end at Louisville in October 2017, but modern basketball history regards him as one of the great teachers, tacticians and motivators in the sport.
Panathinaikos has started 6-7 in EuroLeague, leaving the team in 10th place. The 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 Thanasis Antetokounmpo, the older brother of Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Pitino has had three runs in professional basketball: Boston Celtics president and coach, New York Knicks coach and Knicks assistant coach.
“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 had a shorter, but more successful, run as coach of the Knicks in the late 1980s, winning an Atlantic Division title and reaching the playoffs twice (1988 and 1989) before leaving for Kentucky. Under Pitino, the Knicks won 52 regular-season games and reached the conference semifinals in his final season with the team.
MORE ON RICK PITINO,
Richard Andrew Pitino (born September 18, 1952) is an American basketball coach of Italian descent. He was captain of the St. Dominic High School basketball team in Oyster Bay, Long Island. He enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1970. He was a standout guard for the Minutemen basketball team. His 329 career assists rank tenth all-time at UMass, as of the 2009–10 season. He led the team in assists as a junior and senior. The 168 assists as a senior is the eighth-best single season total ever there. Pitino was a freshman at the same time future NBA legend Julius Erving spent his junior (and final) year at UMass, although the two never played on the same team because freshmen were ineligible to play varsity basketball at the time. Other teammates of Pitino’s include Al Skinner, who also went on to become a successful college coach, and baseballer Mike Flanagan, who went on to pitch in the major leagues and win the AL Cy Young Award in 1979.
Pitino earned his degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) in 1974. He currently serves as the head coach of Panathinaikos of the Greek Basket League and the EuroLeague. He has been the head coach of several teams in NCAA Division I and in the NBA, including Boston University (1978–1983), Providence College (1985–1987), the New York Knicks (1987–1989), the University of Kentucky (1989–1997), the Boston Celtics (1997–2001) and the University of Louisville (2001–2017). Pitino led Kentucky to the NCAA championship in 1996 and Louisville in 2013.
He is the only coach to lead three different schools (Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville) to a Final Four. Pitino is one of only four coaches in NCAA history (along with Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Boeheim) to take his school to the Final Four in four separate decades, one of only three coaches (along with Roy Williams and Jack Gardner) to have led two different programs to at least two Final Fours each, and one of only two coaches (along with Williams) to have led two different programs to at least three Final Fours each. In 2013, Pitino was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Pitino is the only NCAA men’s basketball coach to have a National Championship (along with multiple Final Four appearances) vacated.
Beyond basketball, Pitino has been involved in the sport of Thoroughbred horse racing as the lead partner in Celtic Pride Stable and the Ol Memorial Stable. Among his notable horses have been A P Valentine and Halory Hunter. Pitino, through the stable name of RAP Racing, owns a 5 percent share of Goldencents. Goldencents, who won the $750,000 2013 Santa Anita Derby, ran in the 2013 Kentucky Derby and finished 17th despite having 8/1 odds of winning.
Pitino is the author of a motivational self-help book (and audio recording) named Success is a Choice. He published an autobiography in 1988 entitled Born to Coach, describing his life up until his time with the Knicks. His most recent book Rebound Rules, was the top seller at the 2008 Kentucky Book Fair.
In 2005, Pitino’s Louisville team posted a tie for the most single season wins in school history (33)—since surpassed by the 35 total wins by the 2013 NCAA title-winning Cardinals team—while he is one of two men’s coaches in NCAA history to lead three separate schools (Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville) to the Final Four. The other coach is his in-state rival, John Calipari (UMass Amherst, Memphis, Kentucky), though both final four appearances at UMass and Memphis were later vacated.
As of 2015, Pitino’s .746 winning percentage in 72 NCAA Tournament games ranked fourth among all coaches, third among active coaches.
