UF guard Nick Calathes plans to board a plane this morning on a mission to honor his grandfather and become the first Florida Gator to play men's basketball in the Olympics.
Calathes will travel to Athens and spend the next week working out with Greece's national basketball team. If he sticks on the roster -- and he said Greek basketball officials have told him he will -- he will play for the nation in Athens at next month's Olympic Qualifying Tournament. And if the Greeks finish among the top 3 in the 12-team qualifier, Calathes will play for Greece in Beijing from Aug. 8-24.
"I can represent Florida and represent Greece, where I'm from,"
Calathes said. "It will just be great opportunity to get better, and do it for my family, too."
Calathes was born and raised American. But his great-grandparents emigrated from Greece in the early 1900s, and that relationship makes him eligible to join to the Greeks.
The trip also is a tribute to his paternal grandfather, John, a first-generation American who loved Greece, basketball and his grandchildren all about the same. John Calathes, who rarely missed a practice or game when Nick played at Lake Howell High, died in May 2006.
"He would probably fly right there in a second and be there with me,"
Nick Calathes said.
If Calathes falls short of the national team, he said he plans to remain in Greece for the summer and work out with the under-21 national team. He will return to campus no later than the last week of August.
