A night to remember’ starring Walter Berry (Video)

There are some nights in a player’s career when everything works for them, when they can score from … everywhere on the court, when the ball ‘sticks’ in their hands when rebounding, when all their passes come through and become assists. Walter Berry had such one night on November 23, 1995 at the SEF against Ulker.

The “Truth” had returned to Piraeus for his second stint in the ‘red’ jersey and played his best game against the Turkish team. The American forward stopped at 39 points in the winning game for Olympiacos (92-76) and this has been the best individual scoring record in our team’s history, together with the 39 points Zarko Paspalj had scored against Olimpija three years earlier.

That had been the third game of the season for the European Champions Cup finalists of the two previous F4s in Tel Aviv and Zaragoza. The team under Giannis Ioannidis had beaten Benetton Treviso for the premiere, barely lost against CSKA in Moscow and hosted Harun Erdeny’s Ulker in a packed SEF.

Olympiacos completely controlled the game with Berry showing his ‘mood’ from the beginning. He scored 20 points in the first half and 19 in the second, while also grabbing 13 boards during the 38 minutes he got to play. These 38’ minutes definitely helped him score these numbers, but he had to play that much since at 14’ of said game Dragan Tarlac suffered a blow to the knee and was not able to continue.
Nevertheless, Berry’s 39 points were not the top scoring record of that season for the Champions’ Cup, but rather the fourth one. Arlauckas scored 63 points in Real’s victory over Buckler Bologna a few months later, the Portuguese Santos had scored 45 points against Partizan for the qualifiers of the seasons and Dowson of Bayern Leverkusen scored 40 in the winning game of the Germans against Budivelnik.

The reds’ stats from the game against Ulker