Blogs

Fair play on the road to the playoffs

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Vladimir Stankovic, Euroleague.net

Veteran sportswriter and Euroleague.net collaborator Vladimir Stankovic has been following the best basketball on the continent longer than almost anyone journalist, writing for decades about the sport in major publications in both Serbia and Spain. For the new 2009-10 season, he offers a series of opinion blogs about what's happening on and off the court in the Euroleague.

The Top 16 ended just like it had begun: with excitement, drama, overtimes, surprises and score changes. The Euroleague showed its maturity and complete trust in its teams with the decision not to play all the games at the same time, and the teams responded with fair play. Congratulations to everyone. The saying goes that history is written by the winners. Therefore, the glory of the playoffs will be for Top 16 group winners Regal FC Barcelona, Olympiacos, Maccabi Electra, CSKA Moscow and their second-place followers Partizan, Caja Laboral, Real Madrid and Asseco Prokom. Especially for the Serbian and Polish champs, the accomplishment is grand because of their limited budgets and year-to-year roster changes. We will analyze the playoffs shortly, but first I want to tell you a story that happened almost 40 years ago that I remembered while watching this week's unbelievable ending to Group H.

Overtime stories

When Marcelinho Huertas of Caja Laboral missed the first of a pair of free throws with 12 seconds to go on Thursday, few people at the Fernando Buesa Arena realized that overtime against Cibona was at that moment Caja Laboral's only option of making the Quarterfinal Playoffs. See, a one-point win over Cibona would not have been enough for Caja Laboral to advance, because at that moment BC Khimki was beating Olympiacos by 12 to 14 points, enough to leave Caja Laboral out due to its deficit in global point differential with Khimki. The two teams were to end tied with 3-3 records, also having beaten each other by identical 11-point margins. The next tie-breaker between them was their overall Top 16 point differences. In the end, after the overtime that was forced by the missed free throw from Huertas, Caja Laboral won by 12 points, which combined with the result in Moscow, was enough to eliminate Khimki by 5 points and push through to the playoffs.

As I was saying, this overtime win reminded me of an overtime avoided in similar fashion 39 years ago. It's a story widely known by those with enough years and good memory, but since there're always young and newer fans of basketball, they deservre to hear that famous story, too. In December of 1961, in the quarterfinals of the old Champions Cup, Ignis Varese and Real Madrid were playing in Italy. With a few seconds to go and an 80-80 tie in the score, with his top player Clifford Luyk having just fouled out, Real Madrid coach Pedro Ferrandiz called for a timeout and developed his master plan: the play he drew up was designed for Lorenzo Alocen to score, yes...but not for Real Madrid. Instead, Ferrandiz had Alocen turn...

Plenty left to decide!

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

For a unique perspective on the most exciting months of the season, Euroleague.net brings you media blogger Flavio Tranquillo, a ranking expert on world basketball at its finest. Flavio has long been known as the voice of basketball in his native Italy- and for good reason. But in addition to communicating his expertise as an announcer, Flavio has the background of a coach, the curiosity of a journalist, and most importantly, the devotion of a basketball lover!

And then there were...six! Two more teams to qualify, four still trying, while 14 have been eliminated since the start of the regular season. Raise your hand if back in October you correctly predicted that Fenerbahce Ulker would have not made the Top 16 and that Panathinaikos would have been the first team ousted from the Top 16, joined the following week by Efes Pilsen, Montepaschi and Unicaja - while Prokom and either Maroussi or Partizan advance. Please, I want you to play lotto on my behalf week-in and week-out …

Still to be decided are the winners of the Maroussi-Partizan and Khimki-Caja Laboral battles. The Group E rivals, Maroussi and Partizan, play both on the road, @Panathinaikos and @Regal Barcelona, respectively. Coach Vujosevic's Partizan team has won one more game but has a minus-5 differential in the head-to-head matchup with Maroussi. Last week, both teams were beaten soundly by the two prohibitive favourites in the group. I think Panathinaikos in Belgrade showed the power of a clear mind. Once eliminated from playoff contention, the former defensive champions forgot the shooting blues and made 11 of 19 threes en route to a 16-point win. The basketball becomes so light when you don't have anything to lose or gain …. Witnessing the game through Euroleague TV (by the way: isn't it great to catch all those games at once?) I was very impressed by the fans in Pionir. To hear that incessant chanting, to see the fans support the team after the horn sounded like they had won by 16, well, that is Devotion! No other way to phrase it. Maroussi went down hard vs. Barcelona, scoring just 3 points in the third quarter against a team that had 11 scorers (the 12th was Victor Sada, a very important piece of the blau-grana machine, who was on the court more than 11 minutes). Against Partizan on Thursday, Barcelona will play for home-court advantage in the next round while trying to avenge its only Euroleague loss of the season. Panathinaikos will only play for pride vs. Maroussi, but that "only" needs to be put in context. I really think we should not dwell on teams having different motivations at this stage of the competition. First, the Greens already proved it a moot point by winning in Belgrade and playing very hard. And above all, teams know that tomorrow they might be the ones depending on someone else with little or no motivation playing hard. That's why if I was Partizan I would not be worried about a situation they don't have any control over. Even if, obviously, Maroussi will play for its life, and that is something that cannot be duplicated easily by the Greens.

Proof of the above-mentioned considerations is Cibona dismantling Khimki last week and Olympiacos keeping the Russian team perfectly alive by beating Caja Laboral. Caja Laboral is now -18 in total point differential, Khimki is -24. Both teams beat each other by 11 on the road in the head-to-head matches, while both play at home this week. The Spanish team will face Cibona in a game that will renew the acquaintances between Marcelinho Huertas, point guard of the hosts, and Jamont Gordon, point guard of the guests, who were teammates in Bologna last season in Fortitudo. Gordon might very well be the hottest player in the...

Never underestimate the pride of a champion

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Vladimir Stankovic, Euroleague.net

Veteran sportswriter and Euroleague.net collaborator Vladimir Stankovic has been following the best basketball on the continent longer than almost anyone journalist, writing for decades about the sport in major publications in both Serbia and Spain. For the new 2009-10 season, he offers a series of opinion blogs about what's happening on and off the court in the Euroleague.

Olympiacos, Regal FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Maccabi Electra, CSKA Moscow and Asseco Prokom are already in the Quarterfinal Playoffs. Congratulations to all of them, but my first lines today I want to dedicate to the outgoing champs, Panathinaikos. They arrived in Belgrade this week already out of the race for the playoffs with a 0-4 record, but were willing to show it all had been an accident, just a bunch of circumstances that sometimes fall into place. In the Greek League against Olympiacos last weekend, the Greens already showed that they are going up again, especially in the backcourt. And in Belgrade, even without Nikola Pekovic, they defeated his former team, Partizan. And it was no contest. Drew Nicholas made 6 of 6 from the arc, Stratos Perperoglou added 4 of 6 from that distance. Mike Batiste blocked Aleks Maric three times and also doubled him in scoring (12 against 6). Partizan won in rebounds (32-29) but Panathinaikos won every other aspect of the game and, as Partizan boss Dusko Vujosevic aknowledged after the game, the better team won.

I do not have any doubts that Panathinaikos is a better team than Partizan, but in sports, the best teams do not always win or qualify. The quality and virtues of a champion are put to the test every time the team steps on the court, even more than a regular team, and Panathinaikos was unfortunate to have two bad games in the worst moment. They will pay the price for that, but the will also fall with pride. Panathinaikos coach Zeljko Obradovic, who received a standing ovation from the crowd at Pionir Arena, who will always remember his coaching their team to its only European title in 1992, was asked before the game if "his Partizan" would get any kind of free pass. After the game, he was also asked whether Panathinaikos vs. Maroussi in Week 6 would have some influence on the fate of Partizan, which is contesting a playoff spot with Marouss. Obradovic replied angrily both times: "I played for 15 years and have coached for 19. And I have never, ever in my life, received any gifts from anybody nor have I given them!"

Pionir is unique

I have been writing basketball for about 40 years now, but I can hardly remember anything similar to what I saw in Belgrade on Thursday at Pionir Arena. I know the Partizan fans well, but I have to admit that they outdid themselves this time! Supporting the team even when it is clear that a loss cannot be avoided is something quite normal. But what happened afterwards was something unbelievable, a social phenomenon. More than 20 minutes after the game ended, 90 percent of the fans were still in...

Guessing games going into Week 5

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Regal Barcelona shocking the world by putting together an 18-3 run in OAKA, of all places, to dethrone Panathinaikos.
Real Madrid looking so down for three quarters, risking elimination, coming all the way back, apparently allowing Siena to save the point differential between them with 5 seconds to go, and then going crazy for Sergio Lull pulling a 3+1 that definitely brought some good memories to coach Messina.
Olympiacos having the game apparently won in Zagreb, then allowing Cibona back in it, and then re-winning it down the stretch.
Caja Laboral, after being dismantled by Real Madrid in the national cup, winning against Khimki in Moscow with its back to the wall and also getting even in the oh-so-important point differential department.
Partizan and Maroussi battling each other to the very last possession of what became, after Panathinaikos lost in Athens, a vital game for playoff purposes.

I think the picture is (un)clear enough...

Blues for the Greens

Why is Panathinaikos the only 0-4 team along with Cibona in the Top 16 and out of the competition this early ? Everybody is obviously asking this question. The only sure thing is that there is no single answer. You can point to two defeats - vs. Partizan and vs. Maroussi - to open the discussion. Those losses put the (not anymore) defending champions on the ropes, because losing two in a row to Regal FC Barcelona, right now, is no surprise. Obviously, Sarunas Jasikevicius not being a factor in the Top 16 had a lot to do with the losses. But I also think a big key in this was the ability of opponents to at least contain Nikola Pekovic, the driving force behind PAO's stretch run last season. Especially meaningful was the first game, when his former team Partizan kept the center from Montenegro to 7 points, and the fourth quarter of last week's game, when Pekovic was not the powerful factor he had been until then.

When Pekovic is on his game, i.e. supplies his monstrous production per minute (seventh-best in the Euroleague until now), he balances out the pick-and-roll offense with catches underneath (both rolling and posting up). Especially the rolling part poses big problems for defenses, since it's very hard on a screen-roll to stop the ball, cover his rim-runs and mind the perimeter, where lethal shooters wait, spaced to take advantage of whatever the defense does to stop Pekovic's cuts. But when Pekovic battles fouls or is ineffective - the former being more common than the latter - the Greens' offense becomes a little one-sided, since he accounts for 60% of the post-up action and is scoring on 85% (!!!) of his rolls to the basket. That was very clear in the closing minutes last Thursday. Regal...