But here let me say that I am very excited to be visiting Seton Hall, and I will immediately explain why.
Before 1980, basketball in Greece was little known as a sport and people showed very little interest. In the early 1980s, however, a Greek-American player decided to come and play in Greece at the proposal of the team that won the Greek championship last year. This player changed the history of basketball in Greece and the country gained a tradition in the sport, a tradition that lasts to this day. His name is Nick Galis.
He was the one who introduced me to basketball, young then I was enchanted by him and I entered the world of this very beautiful sport, which I finally fell in love with. Since then I have been learning the history of the game, the European but mainly the American basketball, the birthplace of the sport
Galis was born in Union City, New Jersey. The child of a poor immigrant family, from the Greek islands of Rhodes and Nisyros, Galis took up boxing in his early years, after his father, George Georgalis, who had also been a boxer in his youth. He was later persuaded to give up boxing by his mother, Stella Georgalis, who was terrified after each time that her son would return home from boxing training with a new facial injury. As a result, Galis started playing the sport of basketball instead of boxing. He attended Union Hill High School, in Union City, where he also played high school basketball.
After high school, Galis enrolled at Seton Hall University, where he played college basketball as a member of the Seton Hall Pirates. In his senior season, Galis saw his scoring average reach 27.5 points per game, which was third in the nation! Ιn his senior year of college, Galis won the Haggerty Award (the New York City metro area's best player award), and the Eastern College Athletic Conference Player of the Year award. The same year, he also played in the Pizza Hut All-American game, alongside Larry Bird and Vinnie Johnson. The head coach at Seton Hall, Billy Raftery, would later state that Galis was the best player he ever coached. Galis inducted into the Seton Hall Athletic Hall of Fame, in 1991.
After finishing his collegiate career in 1979, Galis signed with agent Bill Manon, who also managed Diana Ross. Manon did not have Galis work out with any NBA team. Galis was eventually selected by the Boston Celtics in the 4th round of the 1979 NBA Draft, 68th overall. Due to a severe ankle injury that suffered during the Celtics preseason training camp of the 1979–80 season, the franchise was no longer interested in offering him a contract because Gerald Henderson had taken his place on the team, and his injury would keep him out for the foreseeable future.
Galis then decided to pursue a professional career in Greece's top-tier level Basket League. Later, while still playing in Greece, he would be offered NBA contracts by the Celtics and the New Jersey Nets. However, he turned the offers down!
On 20 November 1983, while playing in an exhibition game at the Demetria Tournament '83, with the senior Greek national basketball team, against the North Carolina Tar Heels, at Alexandreio Melathron, while being guarded by North Carolina's shooting guard, Michael Jordan, scored 24 points during the game.
Galis next led the Greek national team to the EuroBasket 1987 gold medal. Averaging 37.0 points per game during the tournament, he was named the MVP of the tournament, after scoring 40 points in the final against the Soviet Union national basketball team and its legendary player, Šarūnas Marčiulionis, for a 103–101 victory. Also led Greece to the second place at the EuroBasket 1989, averaging 35.6 points per game. Galis is most remembered from that tournament, for a stunning effort against the Soviet team led by Marčiulionis, and its other star player, Arvydas Sabonis, in the semifinal game. He scored 45 out of his team's 81 total points in a dramatic, last-gasp 81–80 victory.
He was not very tall, only 6 feet, yet he was strong, a fighter, and was able to score in many different ways - distance did not matter. He was recently inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and was in FIBA’s first Hall of Fame class in 2007. He surely deserves it!
"If I'm the devil's son, then Galis is the devil himself.", Dražen Petrović
"I never thought that there was such a good offensive player in Europe, and especially in Greece.", Michael Jordan
"There is only one way I can think of to stop Nikos from scoring! Lock him up in the hotel!", Roud Harevain, Maccabi Tel-Aviv head coach
"I had given specific instructions on how to defend against the other 4 players. As for Nikos, we just had to sit down and pray!", Vojcek Kricovski, CSKA Moscow coach.
"Although Drazen (i.e. Petrović) is my brother, for the best athlete of 1987, I voted for Galis."', Aco Petrović
