Bartzokas Optimistic on Milutinov but Admits Size Problem Against Valanciunas

Žalgiris Arena, a Friday night in a season still too young. Evan Fournier catches the ball on the right wing, three seconds left, score 91–91. The shot – in. And moments earlier, he was the one who hit the decisive three that gave Olympiacos the lead in situations where a strong team is supposed to solve things through structure, not through a single flash. Olympiacos leaves Lithuania with a 93–91 win. The EuroLeague standings suddenly look pink: 2–0, both wins on the road. But anyone listening to Bartzokas after the game could tell immediately: this victory is a beautiful income statement, not a sustainable business plan. I don't watch games, I read them like moving income statements.

Context: Olympiacos is in the middle of three straight EuroLeague road games, a scheduling challenge any team would fear. Before Kaunas, they were away at Baskonia. After that, Virtus Bologna awaits. And on this defining trip, starting center Nikola Milutinov cannot play due to a hip injury. Head coach Giorgos Bartzokas says Milutinov is "much better, with less pain," but also stresses that his status is "day by day." That language is familiar to insiders: controlled optimism, conditional promise. With that schedule, facing Jonas Valanciunas – a center just returning to Europe after a decade in the NBA – is the most brutal test Olympiacos's defense could face right now. This is the context, but not the whole story.

Olympiacos's problem is not tactical scheme. Bartzokas made it clear: "We had so much difficulty defending the paint, with Jonas Valanciunas. Both of our centers, Tyrique Jones and Donta Hall, are very athletic, but they don't have the size and strength he has." Systematic mistake? Not quite. It is an accurate personnel description. Jones and Hall are excellent athletes in open space, able to switch, protect the three-point line, chase rebounds. But standing next to a true post hub, they lack mass. When they lack mass, they need help. When they need help, shooters like Edwards and Brown get open looks. Valanciunas is not just a spearhead; he is a magnet pulling an entire defense to one side.

What makes Valanciunas different, as Bartzokas describes, is not just physique. He said: "He is European, plays FIBA and knows how basketball is here." This opens up a fact: FIBA rules have no defensive three-second violation, meaning a big man can stand in the paint forever and make it his own territory. Valanciunas knows not only how to exploit that; he knows how to read timing, use his shoulder, choose position, and most importantly, kick the ball out when doubled. He turns the low post into an offensive ecosystem: he can score himself, or he can bait the defense and feed others. For a team lacking a true center like Olympiacos that night, that is an almost unsolvable problem.

Bartzokas didn't only talk defense. He criticized his team's offense with rare frankness: "We should have played better and had more patience, not to rush and to find the best opportunity to score." The result? A team built around shooters, whose head coach admitted "our three-point percentage was very low." Yet they still won, because Evan Fournier – the hero from the NBA – hit two threes at the decisive moments. Fournier is the reason for the win, but looking deeper, this victory reveals that a "team full of shooters" winning on late individual shots is not a team operating well; it is a team being saved by the moment. In finance, we call that profit from volatility, not from operating cash flow.

The dependence on Milutinov is what this analysis wants to highlight. Those who watched the game saw Bartzokas constantly rotating Jones and Hall, searching for the least damaging formula. But he couldn't find it. He himself confirmed: "With Milutinov, I think we would have played better against Jonas." Better here does not mean locking down completely; it means reducing the pressure on the surrounding defenders. Milutinov is the insurance policy for the other four positions. When he is absent, every other defender has to do an extra job, and fatigue plus foul risk rise with every minute. This is exactly what box scores never fully capture.

On the schedule, Bartzokas sees this road stretch as a chance for the team "to find our chemistry." That is a clever manager's phrasing: he knows his team is not yet at its best version, and he is banking wins before the problems get exposed. A win is a win, but 2–0 after two road games, with below-average quality, may be more fragile than it looks. In more than two decades of following the EuroLeague, I know that a margin that close is sometimes a warning signal.

Now, I want to go against the crowd. Many will say: "Olympiacos won, so what is there to worry about?" If that game happened on a night when Fournier had no feel, or a referee made a controversial call at the end, the story would be told the other way. And in Bologna, where Milutinov will almost certainly be absent, where Virtus has a physical frontcourt and a passionate arena, that size problem will appear again. Can Fournier's two threes save the team once more? Don't bet on poor data. Every risk model will tell you: a win built on volatility is a debt that comes due over time.

The second counterintuitive point: Bartzokas, through his own words, may be sending a message to the front office. An ambitious club like Olympiacos can hardly accept a prolonged size gap at center. If Milutinov keeps having hip issues, and if Jones–Hall remain too small against big men like Valanciunas, the mid-season story will get very expensive. In the EuroLeague transfer market, a true center can cost a club several million euros. The transfer market is the only stock exchange where shareholders sing the national anthem – and Olympiacos's shareholders, meaning the fans, will not wait forever.

This week, the Greek league opener (Stoiximan GBL) against Iraklis, scheduled for Sunday, October 4, will be the perfect venue to test Milutinov. If he plays in a low-pressure game, that is a sign of smart load management: use the home game for testing before throwing him into the Bologna battle. If he remains sidelined, "day-by-day" will become a cliché repeated until it is annoying, and all eyes will turn to Olympiacos's offense every week. To me, a good feeling is just an unprocessed error column. Every season is a funding round, and fans are the most unconditional investment fund on the planet. They believe in wins, but a good manager must believe in structure – and Olympiacos's structure owes them an answer to the Valanciunas problem.