Panathinaikos Dominates ASVEL, 102⁠–⁠79

Panathinaikos beat ASVEL 102⁠–⁠79 on Wednesday, 30 September, at OAKA in Athens to improve to 2⁠–⁠0 in the EuroLeague; ASVEL fell to 1⁠–⁠1 for its first European loss after beating Maccabi 84⁠–⁠74 in Round 1 (Eurohoops; L'Équipe). Tip-off was 20:15 CEST (2:15 p.m. ET). Sylvain Francisco led Panathinaikos with 19 points; Lefteris Mantzoukas scored 16 with six rebounds; Jerian Grant had 13; Nikos Rogkavopoulos and Mathias Lessort scored 12 each, Lessort adding eight rebounds (Eurohoops). Nate Sestina paced ASVEL with 14; David Lighty scored 11 and Hugo Besson 10 (Eurohoops). Panathinaikos played without Juancho Hernangomez, Kendrick Nunn, Moustapha Fall, Kostas Sloukas and Nigel Hayes-Davis (L'Équipe).

The EuroLeague is Europe’s top men’s club basketball competition, a season-long league of leading clubs that ends in a Final Four weekend. OAKA is the Olympic Athletic Center of Athens, Panathinaikos’s home arena. CEST is Central European Summer Time, six hours ahead of Eastern Time in the United States in late September. A rebound is a missed shot recovered by either team (Eurohoops; L'Équipe).

Eurohoops reported that Željko Obradović’s side proved too strong for Tony Parker’s ASVEL after both clubs had won their openers, with the hosts extending the lead through the night for a convincing 102⁠–⁠79 (Eurohoops). L'Équipe described a green cauldron that barely trembled: ASVEL stayed close early, including a Joel Bolomboy block on Guerschon Yabusele that kept the score 7⁠–⁠7 in the fifth minute, before Panathinaikos’s pace and rotation depth stretched the gap — 19⁠–⁠11 by the eighth minute and 24⁠–⁠11 by the ninth after Francisco’s spark off the bench (L'Équipe). Halftime was about 56⁠–⁠34 for the hosts; the margin was 80⁠–⁠56 after three quarters and 90⁠–⁠67 at the 35-minute mark before the final 102⁠–⁠79 (L'Équipe).

L'Équipe credited Francisco with 19 points, two assists and a 25 performance index rating; Mantzoukas with 16 total, including 13 in 12 first-half minutes; Lessort with 12 points, eight rebounds and a 23 PIR; and Yabusele with nine points, five rebounds and three assists (L'Équipe). Eurohoops’s scoring leaders for Panathinaikos — Francisco 19, Mantzoukas 16 and six rebounds, Grant 13, Rogkavopoulos 12, Lessort 12 and eight rebounds — match the print box lines used here; where PIR or split detail appears only in L'Équipe, it is attributed to that wire (Eurohoops; L'Équipe). For ASVEL, Eurohoops listed Sestina 14, Lighty 11 and Besson 10; L'Équipe’s narrative lines for those three differed slightly on Sestina and Lighty, so the Eurohoops box totals are used here (Eurohoops; L'Équipe).

Panathinaikos opened the season with a 91⁠–⁠72 win at Paris and followed it with Wednesday’s home rout, moving to 2⁠–⁠0 without Hernangomez, Nunn, Fall, Sloukas and Hayes-Davis (L'Équipe; Eurohoops). ASVEL had started with an 84⁠–⁠74 win over Maccabi Tel Aviv before the Athens loss left the French club 1⁠–⁠1 two days before hosting Valencia (L'Équipe). Late in the Athens game, L'Équipe noted Lessort finishing with alley-oop dunks for the home crowd after the result was already decided (L'Équipe).

A performance index rating, or PIR, is a EuroLeague efficiency number that combines scoring, rebounding, playmaking and other box categories into a single figure; Francisco’s 25 and Lessort’s 23 on the L'Équipe account marked them among the night’s most efficient hosts (L'Équipe). For plain readers: Tony Parker is ASVEL’s president and public face of the Villeurbanne club; Obradović is Panathinaikos’s head coach and one of European basketball’s most decorated coaches (Eurohoops; L'Équipe).

Eurohoops closed Round 2’s Wednesday gameday with Panathinaikos 102, ASVEL 79, alongside Beşiktaş’s first win over Maccabi in Belgrade earlier the same evening (Eurohoops). After Athens, Panathinaikos sat 2⁠–⁠0 on the Paris win plus this win; ASVEL sat 1⁠–⁠1 on the Maccabi win plus this loss (Eurohoops; L'Équipe).