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Alec Peters hops aboard The Crossover
The Olympiacos Piraeus forward chats about everything from his teammates and coaches to his newborn daughter and his breakout campaign |
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In his first season as a full-time starter, Alec Peters has posted the best numbers of his six seasons in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague. It’s been an eventful season for Peters, whose wife gave birth to their first child in December and he then signed a contract extension with the Reds that will keep him in Piraeus until 2026.
The Crossover host Joe Arlauckas has been an admirer of Peters’s game since he first saw him play during the stretch-4’s debut EuroLeague season with CSKA Moscow in 2018-19. That year even saw Peters finish on the podium as a EuroLeague champion!
From his childhood in Illinois through his time playing American football in high school and his pro hoops career with four different clubs in the EuroLeague, Arlauckas will talk Peters through the events that have made him who he is today.
[11:15] “Football was my go-to sport at the time. I was the quarterback of the team, I had a real future in that. Coaches telling me: ‘This is your future.’ Colleges telling me: ‘Hey, this is your future.’ I just did not like playing football as much as I loved playing basketball,” Peters shared.
“Thankfully, that summer between when I was 15 and 16 years old, I grew three inches, got to about 6’6”, got a little bit faster, got a little bit stronger. Basketball started becoming a little bit easier for me and I got good enough to earn a scholarship at Valparaiso.”
Peters joked that sometimes when watching NFL games with his American-born Olympiacos teammates, they will point to the quarterbacks and joke that it could have been him, but Peters has no regrets.
He became a star at Valparaiso and set school records for scoring and rebounds in his four seasons, despite a foot injury that prematurely ended his senior season. Scouts had already seen more than enough and the Phoenix Suns drafted Peters in 2017 and helped him rehab from his foot surgery.
The summer after his first season with the Suns and their G-League affiliate, Dimitris Itoudis, then the coach of CSKA Moscow, began recruiting Peters to come to the Russian capital. It did not take long to get him on board.
[23:20] “This isn’t just an offer from a EuroLeague team that’s been fighting for playoff spots. This is CSKA. This is a team that’s winning right now, that has the roster that nobody can compete with and all they need is you. Coach Itoudis is like: ‘All we need is someone like you,’” Peters said. “I was blessed by Coach Itoudis to have an opportunity of a lifetime to come in right away.”
Peters helped CSKA to the 2019 EuroLeague crown, but soon CSKA went through some changes and he was a casualty of the rebuild. He landed on his feet, however, signing with the team CSKA defeated in the championship game, Anadolu Efes Istanbul.
His season with Efes was a bittersweet one. On the one hand, Peters was part of a team that was mashing the competition and seemed to be the runaway favorite to win it all. On the other, he averaged only 13:42 minutes per game and the season ended in the worst way; it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A year later, Peters was showing off his skills with a new club, Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz as Efes completed the challenge and captured the EuroLeague championship. Though he was no longer with those guys, the bonds built at Efes endured.
[30:15] “The only thing that felt good about it was when those guys would text me. Those guys would text me afterward and be like: ‘Hey, we know you’re not here right now, but we still want to give you your flowers, so to speak,” Peters said of his former Efes teammates.
“Bryant Dunston was one of the best teammates I could ever ask for. I still have a great relationship with him today. Just to hear from him after they won that first year. Because I was a little down about it. I wanted to be there. I wanted to be a part of it.”
While Efes was becoming a dynasty without Peters, Peters was taking his game to the next level thanks, in part, to Coach Dusko Ivanovic.
[33:00] “What he did for me set me up for the rest of my career in the EuroLeague. The opportunity he gave me. He helped me find a lot of things about myself through the difficulties of training camp, through all that, that have stuck with me today.” Peters said of Coach Ivanovic. “He showed me what it really meant to be in shape to play the game of basketball the way that I could potentially play it. I give him all the credit in the world for that.”
After Peters’s second season with Baskonia was marred by a foot injury, he joined Olympiacos. His expectations for minutes were not realized in 2022-23 when he served as the backup to EuroLeague MVP Sasha Vezenkov. Nevertheless, the Reds reached the EuroLeague championship game.
Vezenkov left for the NBA over the summer leaving the door open for Peters to step in as the new starting power forward. He has not disappointed, although the team has dipped in the standings this season, in part due to injuries to several players. As the playoffs approach, Peters and the Reds are ready to mount another assault on the crown.
[56:00] “Whatever position we fall in, we like our chances against anybody,” Peters said. “It could be Barca, Monaco, Pana, Madrid. It doesn't matter to us. We are in that kind of head space as a team that like we are starting to feel like our best days are coming at the right moment.”With a one-hour format of exclusive one-on-one interviews, The Crossover with Joe Arlauckas goes well beyond the playing court with each podcast to delve into the life experiences that have made his guests protagonists and legends of the EuroLeague. The Crossover debuted in 2018 and has featured such current stars as Mike James, Will Clyburn and Mario Hezonja; coaching greats such as Georgios Bartzokas, Dimitris Itoudis, and Zeljko Obradovic, and legends like Theo Papaloukas, Nikola Vujcic and Mike Batiste, among others. Peters is the sixth guest this season after Nigel Hayes-Davis, Kemba Walker, James Nunnally, Chima Moneke and Serge Ibaka.
The Crossover with Joe Arlauckas is available on Youtube, iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, RadioPublic, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, CastBox, iVoox and other platforms.
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