101 Greats of European Basketball

The star who found
his second home
October 18, 2000. The first round of
the newly-founded EuroLeague. Two
days after the opening game between
Real Madrid and Olympiacos
Piraeus – Dino Radja scored the first
basket in that game – host Spirou
Charleroi defeated the St. Petersburg Lions by 80-68.
Mike Batiste, totally unknown in Europe, scored 16
points and pulled 8 rebounds for the winners. It was
the start of a brilliant European career for him.
Batiste finished that season with averages of 16.1
points and 9.2 rebounds, more than enough for some
teams from stronger leagues to put their eyes on him.
Biella was not a huge team in Italy by any means, but
the Italian League was surely a step up in competitiveness
from the Belgian one. In Italy, he put up 12.4 points
and 7.2 rebounds on average. That’s when Batiste was
offered the chance that he didn’t get after his college
years at Long Beach and Arizona State – the NBA called
through the Memphis Grizzlies. He didn’t hesitate to
accept the offer and played 75 games there with solid
numbers: 6.4 points and 3.2 rebounds.
Rebirth in Athens
Up to that point, Michael James Batiste (born November
21, 1977, in Long Beach) was a good player with
notable talent, but somehow he had not taken off. He
had to travel back to Europe, this time to Panathinaikos
Athens, to take that leap of quality in his career. The
coach of the Greens, Zeljko Obradovic, had already won
two European crowns with the team in 2000 and 2002.
He was looking for a versatile big man who could score
under the rim, shoot from mid-range and pull rebounds.
He set his eyes on Batiste, who from a physical point of
view was a ‘copy’ of Corny Thompson, the big man who
Obradovic had coached in Joventut Badalona in the
1990s and the hero of that club’s EuroLeague title team
in 1994, thanks to one of his three-point shots.
Thompson stood at 2.03 meters, only one centimeter
shorter than Batiste, and he had great touch and
great rebounding abilities. Obradovic found a similar
style of player in Batiste. The numbers he had during his
first season were not that spectacular: 7.9 points and
3.2 rebounds, but Obradovic was happy. In 2004-05
Batiste raised the bar to 11.4 points and 4.8 rebounds
and then he did the same thing the following campaign
(13.3 points, making 65.7% on two-pointers and 36.4%
on threes, plus 6.6 rebounds).
Titles in the Greek League and Greek Cup kept stacking
up, but the fans wanted another EuroLeague title,
and that arrived in the 2006-07 season, with a Final
Four in Athens, to boot, and a championship game for
the ages against CSKA Moscow that the Greens won
93-91. Batiste contributed 15 points and 12 rebounds
in the semis against Tau Ceramica (67-53) and then
12 plus 5 against CSKA in one of the best EuroLeague
championship games ever. Together with Dejan Tomasevic,
Kostas Tsartsaris and Robertas Javtokas, Batiste
was part of a wall that Obradovic had built on defense,
but which also contributed many points on offense.
Batiste was not your typical center. His physical
attributes would probably put him more at the power
forward position, but thanks to his rebounding
abilities, his timing and the sixth sense that told him
101 greats of european basketball
Mike Batiste
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