It was the end of the '30s when the Olympiacos Basketball team was founded with players form the "Ionidio" School. Great personalities of Greek basketball wore the 'red' shirt, coaches wrote history, victories came and Olympiacos played a leading role inside and outside the Greek borders.
1961-1990: The golden generation and the tough years
Written on .
A few years after winning the 1960 Championship title, the 'reds' were demoted to the A2 category and Fedon Mathaiou took over the team bench late '60s. Olympiacos returned to the big category soon after. With the support of the President Nikos Goulandris, a team that was challenging titles was created based on a "golden" generation of Greek-American players (Giatzoglou, Kastrinakis, Melini, Diakoulas).
Following the sterile '80s, the second golden decade of the team followed up. In 1991, Socrates Kokkalis took over and led the team to the top of both Greece and Europe. Five consecutive championship titles (1993, 94, 95, 96, 97), three cups (1994, 97, 02) and of course the Champions Cup in the Rome Final Four (1997) is the culmination of an impressive course for Olympiacos that played for two more european finals (1994, 1995) in the four Final Fours that the team participated (1999 - 3rd place).
In February 2008, Panagiotis Giannakis took over the team and during summer of the same years super stars came to wear the 'red' shirt. The Greek coach, together with Papaloukas, Vujicic, Childress, Greer, Bourousis, Halperin, Vassilpoulos, Schortsanitis and Teodosic led Olympiacos to a Euroleague Final Four for the first time in 10 years.