By Nikos Varlas/ varlas@eurohoops.net
The first phase of the regular season concludes with Barcelona travelling to Moscow on Friday to face Georgios Bartzokas’s Khimki Moscow Region.
The Greek coach found a new team and moved to a different city after Barcelona’s failed season in the EuroLeague, but the problems and question marks remain for his former team.
Barcelona is coming off five consecutive defeats and has a record of 4 -10. They have dropped to 13th place in the standings alongside AX Armani Exchange Olimpia Milan, already four wins away from the teams that are now in eighth place. Things are looking rather dire for new Barcelona head coach Sito Alonso and his players in their efforts to avoid a season that will be as difficult as the club’s last one.
They’ve already lost considerable ground after 14 rounds and the schedule in the second half starts with CSKA Moscow in Barcelona and continues with visits soon to some of the top teams in the league (Panathinaikos Superfoods Athens, Fenerbahce Dogus Istanbul, Olympiacos Piraeus, Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv).
Before we move on to the tough times of the last two seasons, let’s take a look at what Barcelona means to the EuroLeague: One of the most constant, traditional and consistent powers since the very inception of the competition!
Barcelona: A byword for permanence at the top level!
In its Round 2 away game against Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade, Barcelona became the first club this century to reach 400 EuroLeague appearances! They are one of the four teams (together with Olympiacos, Baskonia Vitoria Gasteiz and Zalgiris Kaunas) that have never missed a season in the EuroLeague, counting 18 consecutive appearances in the modern history of the competition.
Also, together with Olympiacos, they are the only team with 11 appearances in the playoffs since they were established in the 2004-05 season. In fact, Barcelona started off last season as the only team with 11 consecutive playoffs appearances, but that streak would soon come to an end.
Since 2002 – when the Final Fours began – Barcelona counts seven appearances and two titles, in 2003 and 2010. That 7-out-of-17 rate (41,2%) of making Final Fours is – together with Maccabi, which has the same record – the second-best among EuroLeague teams, behind only the unsurpassable CSKA, with 14 appearances this century in the Final Four!
Barcelona started this season with a record of 274 wins and 124 losses (a win rate of 68.8%), which is the second-best record to CSKA (77.6%), as well.
It’s clear, then, that we’re talking about one of the most consistent powers in modern history and one of the most successful teams in terms of permanence at the top level.
Everything changed in 2016, a clear identity is still being sought
Barcelona’s last Final Four was in 2014 in Milan, which left the bitter taste of being crushed by Real Madrid in the semifinal (100-62). This was followed by the eliminations from the playoffs in 2015 by Olympiacos and in 2016 by Lokomotiv Kuban.
In these two seasons, they lost both the championship as well as the cup in Spain, so after the end of the 2015-16 season, it was decided to close Xavi Pascual’s great coaching tenure, which had lasted nine years!
It was a big change. If we also take into account that during that same summer the people who make the decisions regarding the department of basketball on the club’s board of directors were also changed, then we can see that, Barcelona had a reconstruction on both the executive and coaching levels in the span of a few short days.
The truth – what can be seen on the court – is that Barcelona has been looking for a new identity and consistency in terms of its game ever since then, but has not found it yet.
Unprecedented results
In the 2016-17 season, Bartzokas was chosen to succeed Pascual. For the first time, Barcelona didn’t make the playoffs and completed a season in the EuroLeague with the negative record of 12 wins and 18 losses. It was an unsuccessful season in domestic competitions, as well. There was always the footnote of injuries, too, as the team was hit by numerous injury problems without ever being able to play with a full squad during last season.
In the summer of 2017 it was decided to stop the collaboration with the Greek coach, who was succeeded by Alonso. Many changes were made to the roster, many players departed, many arrived, and the players who stayed on essentially were: Pau Ribas, Juan Carlos Navarro, Petteri Koponen, Victor Claver, Ante Tomic, Sasha Vezenkov, who has been used sparingly, and the young Latvian, Rodions Kurucs, who hasn’t played at all.
The players in which Barcelona invested for a better present and future are: Thomas Heurtel, Kevin Seraphin, Adam Hanga, Adrien Moerman, Pierre Oriola, Rakim Sanders and Phil Pressey.
And yet, the situation hasn’t changed. The 4-10 record, the five defeats in a row right now, the big ups and downs, all show that Barcelona hasn’t managed yet to get out of the black hole they’ve been in for the last two seasons.
The… statistical paradoxes!
The strange thing is that Barcelona’s stats so far do not match or account for its performances and the 10 defeats before the first phase of the regular season has even ended.
Alonso’s team ranks fifth in performance index rating, fifth in offense (with 80.8 points on average), first in assists (20.5 per game) and first in the assist-to-turnover ratio, with 287 assists for 167 turnovers (171.86%)!
Even on defense, where they are facing many obvious problems, there are seven teams that concede more than the 79.9 points that Barcelona does on average.
It takes time and trust; chemistry cannot be bought!
First of all, in sports, as in life, everyone is entitled to periods of decline. Barcelona is no exception. The club was a model of consistency for many years. Now, it have taken a fall, but it’s imperative that Barcelona rises up again! The changes that were made in the summer of 2016 were quite big, fundamental changes. The executives were changed, the roster was altered to a very large extent, and the same happened last summer, too.
Barcelona has quality units and a pretty deep roster. But the team needs time, a stable environment and, above all, patience and trust.
The coach has to trust his players and… the other way around. The management also has to trust the coach. Chemistry is not something that happens overnight in these situations, either. All of these elements do wonders in sports, but they cannot be bought. They are built and acquired by having faith in a long-term plan and, more than anything, with time!
When you have these things, it’s much easier to make the right corrections and additions and removals each summer, and to avoid mistakes. Barcelona needs nothing more than to remain faithful to its history and the model the tam represented for so many years in order to find their way back to the top.
A steady philosophy, a steady coach who will stay and work for years (just as happened with Pascual), a strong body of Spanish players with foreign players who can click in a harmonious way and who will stay on for many seasons and be identified with the club.
Patience is a virtue and in the transitional period that Barcelona is going through, the biggest key for the decision-makers is to stick with the right plan and have faith! A kind of faith that must remain unwavering, regardless of the results. This is the only way to get vindication, success and titles, and to create a team that, when it reaches the top, will be able to stay there for a long time!