1938-1960: The birth and the first championships

It was the end of the '30s when the Olympiacos Basketball team was founded with players from the "Ionidio" School. Great personalities of Greek basketball wore the 'red' shirt, coaches wrote history, victories came and Olympiacos played a leading role inside and outside the Greek borders.

Giorgos Stamatakis, a Physical Education Professor, was the one to create the first Olympiacos basketball team with students from the Ionidio School, representing the 'reds' in the championships held from 1938 through 1949. The first players to ever wear the team shirt were Nikolaidis, Dimitropoulos, Pitsolakis, Koutsoukos, Andreadis Pipis, Andreadis Giorgos and Michopoulos.

The first great protagonists of the 'red' story, the Spanoudakis brothers. Alekos was the first european player to use the jump shot, while Giannis, apart from being a players, he was also the coach of the team for years learing some of the sport secrets from the legendary Bob Cousy.

The 1949 championship was the first title in the team history, while eleven years later (1960) the second title came as well. A few months later, Olympiacos played for the first time in Europe against the Turskish Galatasaray for the Championship Cup.

Many great players were side by side with the Spanoudakis brothers all those years. Thodoros Vamvakousis, Vassilis Fassilis, Manolis Kazanidis, Giannis Meimaris, Markos Kaloudis, Dimitris Douratsos, Thymios Philippou and other greats because what they were doing at the time was really great and coming from their hearts.