He played two seasons in Spain
Panionios’s Giorgos Tsalmpouris: Spain will always have 'a special place in my heart'
Player Spotlight
5 Mins read
Ask Giorgos Tsalmpouris where his favorite place to play basketball has been in his career and the Panionios Cosmorama Travel Athens big man will answer without hesitation: Spain. And it all goes back to Ricky Rubio.
The 29-year-old Tsalmpouris has etched out a strong career in Greece with Panionios as a 2.17-meter power forward who can hit the three-point shot. He is currently averaging 11.5 points per game while connecting on 34.9% from long range while also contributing 3.4 rebounds.
This is Tsalmpouris’s second season back in his native Greece with the Athens club and he is pleased with his current situation – playing in the BKT EuroCup for a team on the rise.
“Every year, my goals change. Being 29, I don’t have very specific goals. My ultimate goal is to enjoy the most of the years I have left on the court playing at a high level,” he told David Hein.
Before Tsalmpouris’s professional career started, the Thessaloniki native had a life-changing experience as he attended Iowa State University for the 2014-15 season.
“Going to Iowa State is to this day one of the nicest experiences I’ve had in my career so far. Imagine an 18-year-old from a Greek town experiencing college basketball. I met great people my year there, I played with and against great players, and generally that experience improved me as a player and as a person,” said Tsalmpouris, who averaged 1.4 points that season.
He returned to Greece after that year and played for a series of Greek teams – AEK Athens, Kolossos Rodou, PAOK Thessaloniki and Apollon Patras – over the first seven years of his career.
Then came 2022 when he moved to Spain and signed with Real Betis. And Tsalmpouris came into a team that had the feeling of a United Nations meeting with players from Ukraine, Latvia, Serbia, Senegal, Dominican Republic, Hungary and Congo.
"In general, what we do gives us the chance not to only travel and meet people all over the world but fight with them too. Especially in Spain, I was in squads with 13-14 people from 9-10 different nationalities. You know we have our differences in style of life or culture, but at the end of the day we’re all there for the love of the game and that’s more than enough to make such a diverse team a unit,” he said.
Tsalmpouris said he got a chance to go to Betis because head coach Luis Casimiro faced his team the year before as the play-caller at Promitheas Patras in Greece.
“He knew me already and it made it easier to happen and I’m grateful for it,” the big man said of the move to Spain.
The move to his place of dreams.
“Playing in Spain was a childhood dream of mine because I grew up idolizing Ricky Rubio and watching the ACB's early Sunday games on Greek TV,” he admitted.
Tsalmpouris played with Betis until the February 2023 national team window.
“It was a weird situation in Seville because I didn’t have a guaranteed contract for the whole season, but I had consecutive monthly contracts so it put a lot of pressure on me to prove myself valuable enough to stay the next month and the next,” Tsalmpouris said.
“Towards February the team needed to make changes and given my contract situation I was let go, although I believe I did a pretty good job my time in Seville.”
He ended up collecting 8.8 points and 2.9 rebounds per game over 16 contests while shooting 40% from long range. He was then picked up by Bilbao Basket in February to cover for an injury. In his new team, he averaged 6.6 points and 2.9 rebounds in 14 Spanish League games.
“When I moved to Bilbao, I quickly fell in love with it. I finished the season on a high and my priority was to stay there, so once the team wanted too it was an easy decision,” Tsalmpouris said.
He stayed the whole 2023-24 season in Bilbao, though he rarely played in February and March with just two appearances. He didn’t have a major injury at all, but the team had five bigs for the rotation and the coach decided to cut it to four, leaving Tsalmpouris as the odd man out.
“It’s obviously tough not being able to perform and watch from the bench most of the games but it’s part of the game,” said Tsalmpouris, who ended up averaging 3.0 points and 1.1 rebounds for the season.
That production didn’t exactly leave Tsalmpouris with loads of options for last season, though he wanted to continue his journey abroad. He ended up going to Panionios, which had just earned promotion back to the top flight from the second division.
“When Panionios approached me I was hesitant because although it’s a historic club, it was a new team at the time having just made it up to the first division. But I quickly figured that it’s a situation I want to be involved and I made the decision to sign with the team and I obviously am proud of that,” he said.
Staying at Panionios for this season then offered him a chance to play in the EuroCup for the first time. And he is doing well there. But there will always be his time in Spain.
“My two years in Spain were hands down the best of my career with their ups and downs obviously. The ACB is the best domestic league for a reason and being part of it and competing at that level is pretty amazing,” he said.
“I also was lucky enough to be in two great cities, and especially Bilbao to this day has a special place in my heart. I was the happiest I’ve been for the most part of my time there. It’s a home away from home for me.”