Crazy rumors from Greece, part 2

I think I did warn you.. and there is way more to come.

But let's start from the beginning. This whole story revolves around the club of Panathinaikos and the rumor that surfaced today from one of the new Greek sports websites, theplayer.gr. The first impression is that seems like a publicity stunt. So the article says that Pavlos Yannakopoulos, president of Panathinaikos BC will be signing an NBA superstar. A star of the caliber of Byron Scott and Dominique Wilkins.. it even says that the deal is already done and that the president of Panathinaikos will actually be announcing this player if Panathinaikos conquers the Greek league. As in, right after..

As per usual other Greek websites, used this article as a source and produced their own articles. But someone took it even further.. a french website basketnews.net, used the Greek articles as a source and they deduced that the chosen superstar is Predrag Stojakovic. Of course this is not implied anywhere in the origina article/rumor that it's actually him but it's only an assumption. Stojakovic has a contract until 2012 that pays him 14 million dollars per season. Even for the owners of Panathinaikos this is an unreasonable amount as it would actually amount to 5.6 million euros per season if they were to match it and that is with the taxes of 40% deducted. Stojakovic is always a favourite in Greek-related rumors because he also has a Greek passport..

Later on, even more Greek sites replicated the article from France and the vicious circle that is also known as "European basketball rumors", continued anew. I dread to think where these articles have ended, in what form and after how many translations. As I said in the previous article about crazy rumors, it will be a long summer.. When starting rumors like that it should be good to be able to back them when the time comes.


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