{"id":502543,"date":"2018-09-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/because-of-people-like-him-we-have-the-basketball-that-we-have\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T10:21:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T07:21:02","slug":"because-of-people-like-him-we-have-the-basketball-that-we-have","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/because-of-people-like-him-we-have-the-basketball-that-we-have\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBecause of people like him we have the basketball that we have\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"responsive-video-container\" style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; margin-bottom: 20px;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hAqI8HSxmHQ\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div style=\"direction: ltr;\">\n<div> \t\t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv participated the Gala event held in Greece in memory of the late Mr. Pavlos Giannakopoulous. Maccabi\u2019s chairman Mr. Shimon Mizrahi who was a friend of the late president and owner came to show his respect for his friend and for the family &#8211; The brother Thanasis, the wife Despina and her son Dimitrios who is today the president of the green club.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t\t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">David Federman (one of Maccabi\u2019s owners) also attended the Gala event. Among the Maccabi reps to attend the Gala event: Maccabi\u2019s vice CEO Eli Drikes, Mccabi\u2019s GM Nikola Vujcic the club\u2019s CTO Roey Gladstone and all of the members of the first team participating in the tournament. Fenerbache\u2019s head coach who won five EuroLeague championships Zeljko Obradovic and Fener\u2019s GM Maurizio Gheradini also attended the Gala.<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t\t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Dimitrios Giannakopoulous, the president of Panathinaikos who sat next to the EuroLeague\u2019s CEO Mr. Jordi Bertomeu, spoke and thanked Shimon Mizrahi personally for his friendship with his father throughout the years.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">\u201cShimon and Maccabi were always rivals on the court but true friends outside it\u201d, said an emotional <strong>Dimitrios<\/strong>. Thanasis Giannakopoulous, the brother of Pavlos and one of Panathinaikos\u2019 owners, also spoke with the invitees.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t\t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">\u201cI would say that I know Mr. Pavlos Giannakopoulos for more than 30 years\u201d, said <strong>Shimon Mizrahi<\/strong> about the late President. \u201cHe was a man of honor with a lot of dignity and tradition. I appreciate everything that he was doing and as you know he was a very loyal person, when there was the crisis between FIBA and the EuroLeague (I.e. the beginning of the 2000\u2019s), he and me decided together to give it another chance and we stayed with FIBA another year with the SuproLeague and then we came to the EuroLeague&#8221;.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p> \t\t<span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">&#8220;I would say that Mr. Pavlos Giannakopoulos devoted his life to his work and to his basketball, you can\u2019t find everyday people like that\u00a0 and because of people like him we have the basketball that we have and it\u2019s a great honor to be here and to take part in this tournament.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">I think that Panathinaikos is a very important part of the EuroLeague, and Mr. Pavlos Giannakopoulos devoted a lot for the European basketball\u201d, added Shimon Mizrahi.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The owners and the players of Maccabi attended the Gala event in memory of the late Panathinaikos president Mr. Pavlos Giannakopoulous. Dimitrios Giannakopoulous: \u201cMaccabi were always rivals on the court and true friends outside it\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":502541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-502543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-54"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":502545,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502543\/revisions\/502545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502543"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=502543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}