The weekend for our team started with visit to the basketball museum of Thessaloniki, one of the first museums of this kind in the world.
Here the citizens consider themselves as a habitants of the Greek basketball capitol. And it is not only about famous derby and great rivalry of Galis, Giannakis vs Prelevic and Stavropoulos. The missioners of YMCA brought basketball here from the States and made it popular. Actually the first team in the city was called XANO – as a translation of the abbreviation.
The Army Men were here two years ago during the preseason but it was only the representatives of the coaching staff who visited the museum. This time the whole team came. The players expressed big interest in studying the old basketballs, documents, jerseys, trophies, the chair that was used as a basket in previous century. Aaron Jackson made some photos of his friend Kostas Vasiliadis jersey – they played together in Bilbao and they will meet again soon as the Greek plays for AEK now.
The boys who play basketball in local youth center came to meet Euroleague champions. There were some speeches, gifts exchange. CSKA uniform, signed by the players and coaches will be the part of the exposition very soon.
