He insists that he's never to blame when his team loses ; instead, it's always either the referees or his players not performing according to his plans.
He's lean and mean against young players when they're not performing up to his "standards" (during the 1995 season he threw a bottle of water, of all things, to Giorgos Sigalas) , but he acted like nothing happened when Walter "The truth" Berry threw his towel to his face after hia substitution during a greek league match.
In early 1997, Ioannidis quoted on greek basketball referies, saying that they're incompetent, that his knowledge of the sport is ten thousand times better than theirs and that, although they know their rules very well, that doesn't mean that they know enerything about the sport. He forgot to mention though, that team he coaches has led the league in free throws taken and fouls won every year since 1980 and that the only championships he's won are in Greece with Aris Salonika and Olympiakos.
After a brief spell in the late seventies, he always declines offers to coach the Greek national team, even during his one-season absence from coaching. This can be attributed to the previous reason, as he would have to coach star players, such as Panayotis Yannakis, Fanis Christodoulou and Panayotis Fassoulas, who of course wouldn't tolerate this manhandling.
Well... stranger things HAVE happenned, but during the week before the match between Aris Salonika, Ioannidis' first club and AEK Athens, his present club, Aris coach Slobodan Subotic, who incidentally was a player of Aris when Ioannidis was the coach, was putting together offensive plays for Aris' top guns, Shackleford and Ortiz. That was Tuesday ; on
Wednesday, Ioannidis teaches his players counter-strategies against the very same plays. Talk about E.S.P., eh?
He may be the winningest coach in the history of FIBA basketball, but he's always had a star player in his team, who most of the times scored more than the sum of his teammates' scoring tally. First it was Nick Gallis, then Zarko Paspalj, Walter Berry, Eddy Johnson, David Rivers and now Victor Alexander.
He may be the winningest coach in the history of FIBA basketball, but he has a 1 - 5 record against Bozidar " Congratulations, Yannis, you have a great team " Maljkovic and has not defeated him in their last four encounters for the European Championships.
He may be the winningest coach in the history of FIBA basketball, but he's also the only one to have participated in FIVE Final Fours and never win one.And last, but certainly not least...
How serious can a coach be when he insists on parking his car first in Peace and Friendship stadium's ( that's Olympiakos' home court ) parking lot. This means that practice won't start if a player has already parked there. Instead, ( and this HAS happened ) that player has to unpark his car and wait for "coach" Ioannidis to park his own and, on top of everything, curse him for good luck. Oh, I forgot to mention that Ioannidis is the head of the Greek Basketball Coaches Assosiation... Great choice, eh lads...
How serious can a coach be when he insists on parking his car first in Peace and Friendship stadium's ( that's Olympiakos' home court ) parking lot. This means that practice won't start if a player has already parked there. Instead, ( and this HAS happened ) that player has to unpark his car and wait for "coach" Ioannidis to park his own and, on top of everything, curse him for good luck. Oh, I forgot to mention that Ioannidis is the head of the Greek Basketball Coaches Assosiation... Great choice, eh lads...
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