The Greens are the champs! Spanoulis is the MVP

Panathinaikos Athens is the Euroleague Basketball champion for 2009! Panathinaikos lifted its second crown in three years by beating last season’s champion CSKA 73-71 in a thrilling final at o2 World in Berlin on Sunday night. One of the most exciting basketball title games in history went to the wire and wasn’t decided until Ramunas Siskauskas’s attempted three at the buzzer bounced out. That allowed Panathinaikos to celebrate its fifth Euroleague title and the seventh for head coach Zeljko Obradovic, the winningest head coach in Euroleague history. Vassilis Spanoulis was named Final Four MVP after scoring 13, including a clutch triple with less than three minutes to play. Panathinaikos had 10-0 runs in both the first and second quarters to surge ahead and Sarunas Jasikevicius and Drew Nicholas finished the second period with back-to-back three-pointers to give the Greens a 48-28 halftime lead. They would prove to need each of those as CSKA held the Greens scoreless for more than 18 minutes, scoring 17 unanswered points to come back. CSKA would narrow the gap to 1 in the closing seconds, but couldn’t complete the comeback. Antonis Fotsis added 13 points and 8 rebounds for the winners and Jasikevicius and Dimitris Diamantidis scored 10 each. J.R. Holden paced CSKA with 14 points and Trajan Langdon and Siskauskas each scored 13.

Panathinaikos Athens’s star guard Vassilis Spanoulis was selected Euroleague Basketball’s 2009 Final Four MVP after leading the Greens to a 73-71 victory over defending champion CSKA Moscow in the title game on Sunday night at o2 World in Berlin. Spanoulis was selected in a vote of media after leading the winners with 31 total points in the Final Four, including 13 in the final. At his very first Final Four, Spanoulis showed no signs of nervousness, scoring his team’s first basket and 7 points overall in the first quarter to keep the Greens in the game when CSKA started strong. He added another three late in the second period in helping his team to a 20-point halftime lead and scored his final basket with just less than three minutes to play, helping Panathinaikos stave off CSKA’s final surge en route to lifting the Euroleague crown for the first time.