Georgis Papagiannis, Former NBA Drop-Out, Is Plenty Good Enough For A Second Go

Greece national team center Georgios Papagiannis’s name has been revisited in NBA circles this, perhaps for the first time since he left American shores more than four years ago. The two things are related.

Papagiannis first arrived in the NBA after being drafted 13th overall in the 2013 NBA Draft by the Sacramento Kings. Indeed, he arrived in Sacramento as part of a heist; the Kings had traded down from the eighth spot in a deal with the Phoenix Suns, receiving the thirteenth pick (Papagiannis), the 28th pick (Skal Labissiere), the draft rights to Bogdan Bogdanovic (who was drafted two years prior but had not joined the NBA by that time) and a 2020 second-round pick (later used on Xavier Tillman).

With the eighth pick, the Suns drafted Marquese Chriss. All NBA trades are supposed to be win-win for both parties involved. This one was not.

Nevertheless, Papagiannis was not the winning part of it. He played with the Kings for only 18 months, appearing in 473 minutes across 38 games with nary a minute in the rotation to speak of, before being waived at the trade deadline of only his second season, This is the reason behind his re-emergence in the NBA news cycle this week – until the San Antonio Spurs’ shock waiving of Joshua Primo, Papagiannis held the unofficial record for the fastest contract termination of any lottery since the rookie scale contract was modified in 2005.

That ignominy is a thing of the past, though, and while his time with the Kings was the entirety of his career in the NBA (save for a one-game, four-minute stint with the Portland Trail Blazers immediately afterward, in which he recorded two points, one rebound and two steals, which to be fair is about as good as a four-minute stint can go), he has instead returned to his homeland of Greece. There, Papagiannis was signed with the same team he was with when he first joined the NBA, the powerhouse of Panathinaikos, where he remains today.

And now that he is back there, he has rediscovered his game.

An important player for both the greens and his country, Papagiannis has started to put together quite the two-way role playing package. Running the court much better than most others of his giant 7’2 frame, Papagiannis has gotten a lot better as a finisher, interior defender, roller, lob threat and occasional rim-runner.

Because of his size, agility and positioning, there is always a lob over the top available to Papagiannis, one he usually finishes with a dunk. When grounded, he has enough poise in the post and touch on the mid-range to get a few, and with a free throw stroke consistently above the 70% mark, efficiency is guaranteed (as evidenced by his .671 true shooting percentage across all competitions last season). In the EuroLeague, the best standard of league basketball in the world outside of the NBA, Papagiannis averaged 10.2 points, 8.2 rebounds and 1.7 blocks to only 1.7 fouls in only 28.4 minutes per game last season, and while he narrowly failed to win the EuroLeague Defensive Player of the Year award, he could well have done.

Papagiannis perhaps does his best work defensively. He has excellent shot-blocking timing and enough agility to cover ground in the lane, the hands are quite alive, and the size alone is enough to be a rebounding presence. Despite his limited development on American shores, waiving him in this previously record-setting way was a mistake.

To be fair, his much-improved game is still not without its shortcomings. Papagiannis does not offer much outside the paint on either end except for slipped screens and exploitable switching defense, and he is also a finisher not a creator, a limitation exposed and emphasized by the way he can disappear when his team is struggling.

However, having joined the NBA when he was as young as he did, the July 1997-born Papagiannis is still only 25 years old, the same age give or take a few weeks as Bam Adebayo, Robert Williams and Lauri Markkanen, and almost a full year younger than Brandon Clarke. He is of an age where he may no longer be considered a premium prospect, but also where he has time to grow as a player, and he has largely avoided the injuries that can be so commonly seen in players of his size.

(Pleasingly, he is also one day younger than Chriss.)

Papagiannis is under contract to Panathinaikos for one more year, and while he had NBA out-clauses in each of the last two summers, the reported $4 million buyout clause he would have to pay Panathinaikos perhaps proved prohibitive to an NBA return. Given his previous disappointing stay, leverage for much more than the minimum salary might be hard to come by. But if Papagiannis – the highest-drafted player in Greece’s basketball history – should ever return to the NBA, know that he will come back as a much better player than when he left it.