Steve Giatzoglou


Stylianos "Steve" Giatzoglou, is a Greek American professional basketball coach, and the president of the Union of Greek Basketball Athletes. He's also a former basketball player, having competed professionally in the Greek Basket League. During his playing career, his nickname was "The Lion".

Playing career

College career

Giatzoglou played college basketball at Connecticut College, under the name Steve Young.

Professional career

Giatzoglou's pro career was noted for his successes with the Greek Basket League club Olympiacos. He's considered today as one of the greatest players in the club's history. With Olympiacos, he won 2 Greek League championships and 4 Greek Cups. He was the Greek Cup Finals Top Scorer in 1977, 1978, 1979, and 1980. He also played with the Greek club PAOK.
In the top-tier level Greek League, he scored a total of 6,044 points, which is the 10th most total points scored in the competition, since the 1963–64 season.

National team career

Giatzoglou made his debut with Greece national basketball team on May 6, 1973. He played in 115 games, scoring a total of 1,468 points, for a scoring average of 12.8 points per game.
Giatzoglou played in 3 EuroBasket tournaments with Greece's national team : in 1973, 1975, and 1979. His last game with the Greek national team was on 18 February 1981, in a friendly game against the Bulgarian national basketball team.

Coaching career

As a basketball head coach, Giatzoglou worked in several clubs in Greece, including: Olympiacos, Sporting, Iraklis, Aris, AEK, Pagrati, Peristeri, Gymnastikos S. Larissas, Egaleo, and Kavala. In 2014, Giatzoglou was hired as assistant coach to work in South Korea, with the Goyang Orions of the Korean Basketball League. In 2015, Giatzoglou returned to Greece to coach Kavala.
In 2018, Panionios hired Giatzoglou to be the club's new head coach. However, the club released him from the position before he coached the team in any games, due to a backlash from the team's fans, that was a result of Giatzoglou's personal political views.

Awards and accomplishments

Pro career

In October 2016, Giatzoglou endorsed the Neo-Nazi political party Golden Dawn, and attended the celebration of their newspaper's 1,000th issue.

Additional sources