By Panos Katsiroubas/ info@eurohoops.net
The Magnifying Glass focuses its attention on all the courts of Turkish Airlines Euroleague and each week examines through its basketball lens some of the games that stole the show in Europe’s top competition!
CSKA got the win and the tie-break
The big showdown for first place in the group of death took place in Moscow, with CSKA hosting Laboral Kutxa Vitoria Gasteiz. Dimitris Itoudis’s players managed to get the win after a great game, and with a relatively lucky shot by Milos Teodosic at the end of the contest they also managed to cover the difference of their defeat in Vitoria. As a result, they largely secured first place in Group F. Laboral played good basketball but lost mostly for two reasons. The first was that, for a long time in the second and third quarters, they couldn’t limit CSKA’s pick-and-roll game. As a result, the home team scored several easy baskets, most from mid-range, as Laboral’s big men were hesitant and conservative on defense. The second reason was that the visitors missed several well-created and open shots from the perimeter.
Their 7-for-29 three-pointers is very poor, especially when 2 or 3 shots on target could have changed the rhythm and the momentum of the game. CSKA, on the other hand, shot 45% on 10-for-22 accuracy from behind the 6.75-meter line. The home team got tremendous help from the excellent duo of Cory Higgins and Andrey Vorontsevich. The American led a first-quarter counterattack when his teammates looked like they couldn’t find a rhythm against Laboral’s very good start defensively. In those first 8 minutes, CSKA had scored only 10 points, but with a fast 7 by Higgins they reached 20 at the end of the first quarter and started building eight- to 12-point leads that lasted much of the game. The poor pick-and-roll defense of Velimir Perasovic‘s players let CSKA get in a good offensive rhythm. In the fourth quarter, Laboral tried a zone defense and partly succeeded in slowing down CSKA and closing the gap to 7 points with plenty of time remaining.
That’s when Nando De Colo spoke up, once again striking on the Laboral big men’s lack of speed, scoring important baskets and locking up the win. Outside of the offense, a good job was done by CSKA defending Ioannis Bourousis, who had to deal with double-teaming the closer he got to the basket. He was forced to execute under pressure and tough conditions, often failing to find any room and passing instead to his teammates. Bourousis finished with 3-for-11 field goal shooting and a minimal impact on the game. Laboral, at any rate, showed in yet another game, perhaps the toughest, that they’re a high-level team that rightfully occupies one of the group’s top two spots.
With the captain’s signature
One of the most important games of the week was the one between Panathinaikos Athens and Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar. The two teams are struggling to finish second in Group E to secure the home court advantage. Lokomotiv had won their previous three games this season, but couldn’t make the 4-for-4 because of a truly great final 5 minutes from the home team, which turned the game around through defense and versatile line-ups. Until the 35th minute, Georgios Bartzokas’s team seemed like they were in control of the game. They had imposed their rhythm and looked like they were close to getting the win. Anthony Randolph was their main weapon, using his versatility, speed and good mid-range shot to create many problems for the slower Panathinaikos big men. On defense, Randolph wasn’t particularly exposed, even though the home team showed – especially in the beginning of the game – that they were going to hit him with Miroslav Raduljica’s dynamic game in the post at every opportunity. The Serbian center might’ve scored some baskets in the first few plays, but as the game wore on, he started facing better defense that, in most instances, started to evolve into double-teams.
As time passed, Raduljica’s impact on the game decreased and, especially in the second half, he was essentially out of the game. Aside from this, Aleksandar Djordjevic’s players were somewhat naïve on the defensive end. They tried to contain Malcolm Delaney, something that they largely succeeded in doing in terms of scoring, but not in terms of creating gaps in the defense. In many plays, they sent help that wasn’t always necessary and as a result, gaps were created that Matt Janning and Victor Claver punished from the perimeter. This so-called “overhelping” very exposed Panathinaikos’s defense often. The only thing that Lokomotiv couldn’t control was the amazing performance of legendary leader Dimitris Diamantidis and James Gist’s great cuts to the basket after pick-and-rolls on the perimeter. These two kept the home team in the game until the fourth quarter. That’s when Panathinaikos counterattacked based on its defense. First with Vince Hunter in the line-up, and later with Gist and Antonis Fotsis as its big men, the Panathinaikos defense tightened like a vice.
Lokomotiv scored only 4 baskets throughout the whole quarter, 2 as the shot clock expired, one off a defensive play by Dontaye Draper and one by Randolph when the game had already been decided. The Greens pressed relentlessly, didn’t allow Lokomotiv any room, stole balls and, on the other end of the court, got into an offensive rhythm through defense. As such, Panathinaikos turned around a game that seemed lost. In the end, they also had a chance to cover the difference of their defeat in Krasnodar, but Diamantidis’s last shot hit the rim. Of course, this didn’t reduce at all the captain’s great performance. He finished the game with 15 points, 5 rebounds and 6 assists in perhaps his best appearance in this year’s competition.
The madness continues in Freak City
The teams that are continuing to drive people crazy in the Top 16 are two: Crvena Zvezda Telekom Belgrade and Brose Baskets Bamberg. If we also consider how tough that group is, the accomplishments of Andrea Trinchieri’s team are truly mythical, and in Freak City, they can rightly dream of a qualification to the playoffs. The latest casualty was Khimki Moscow Region in Dusko Ivanovic’s first game after taking over after Rimas Kurtinaitis. It was another thriller in the Brose Arena, like most games that have been played there. In the opening 20 minutes, the game was perfectly balanced, with Bamberg making the most of good ball circulation and movement without the ball, while Khimki utilized two-on-two collaborations in pick-and-roll situations, with Tyrese Rice dishing many great assists. In the second half, the visitors did a great job defensively in the third quarter, when they were especially accurate from the perimeter, taking advantage of Bamberg’s slow defensive reactions and poor close-outs. With Khimki getting leads that reached 10 points and Bamberg being unable to find the target despite good passing and open shots, it looked like the game was going to tip to the visitors’ side.
The final minutes, though, were a different story, one that was written mainly by Bradley Wanamaker. The home team’s American guard had scored only 7 points up to the 35th minute of the game, but in the last 5 minutes he turned into the absolute protagonist. He scored in every possible and improbable way. He was aggressive in transition at every opportunity, struck his opponents in isolation plays, scored from the perimeter either after a dribble or spotting up for open shot facilitated by his teammates. Wanamaker poured in 18 points in those 5 minutes and he was one of three reasons for the upset. The second was Bamberg’s amazing defense in the final minutes, with Nicolo Melli and Daniel Theis locking down Rice and Alexey Shved following switches.
They forced Khimki to commit turnovers and make bad offensive choices that also created open-court opportunities that Bamberg took advantage of. In all of this, Khimki revealed the defensive problems that they have shown in many games, with opposing teams getting wide avenues to the basket. There was no help, one-on-one situations consistently went Bamberg’s way and Khimki’s transition defense was literally unacceptable. These three factors led Bamberg to victory and keep its in the sphere of qualification. Khimki, on the other side, despite a formidable roster, seems like it can’t find any chemistry, especially on defense, and is now in a tough spot with five losses in its last six games.
Barcelona for the qualification
The clasico that we watched between FC Barcelona Lassa and Real Madrid in Barcelona’s Palau Blaugrana was one of the strangest. The game can easily be divided into three parts, which are characterized by the dominance of one or the other team within a given time frame. The home team got the win in the end, in what was a crazy game, of medium quality, but a win that’s quite crucial in regards to the qualification chances for both teams. Even more valuable to this victory is the fact that Xavier Pascual didn’t have Alex Abrines and Juan Carlos Navarro in his lineup, players who can contribute in many different ways to the offense. In the first 15 minutes, Barcelona completely dominated with amazing defense as the cornerstone. Tomas Satoransky, Pau Ribas, Stratos Perperoglou and Joey Dorsey essentially annihilated Madrid’s offense. As a result of this, after 14 minutes the score was an out-of-this-world 31-6 the home team. In that span, the home team had 7-for-10 two-pointers, 5-for-6 three-pointers, 7 assists and a performance index rating of 46. Madrid, meanwhile had 3-for-14 two-pointers, 0-for-7 three-pointers, just 1 assist and a negative ranking of -9. Of course, it was impossible for these numbers to stay at these levels, so it made sense that Madrid reacted, while Barcelona began to feel the effects of its limited rotation along the perimeter.
In the remaining 26 minutes, the home team dished only 2 assists and finished the game with a negative assist-to-turnover ratio, 9 to 15, respectively. The visitors were able to react mostly thanks to the axis of Sergio Rodriguez and Gustavo Ayon. The Spanish guard had 8 points, but also 6 of his team’s 14 assists, most of which were received by the Mexican center, who finished the game with 18 points. Madrid improved its defense, took advantage of the misses by Barcelona, and chipped away at the deficit, actually taking the lead in the fourth quarter by as many as 6 points. In the 20 minutes after that initial 31-6 start by Barcelona, Madrid produced a 21-52 run to get a 52-58 lead. That’s when Satoransky and Perperoglou’s class spoke, as they took their team on their shoulders and, with some big shots, gave them back the lead. From that point on, the defense finished the job, with Barcelona defending the screens away from the ball for Jaycee Carroll very well, while also finding ways to deal with pick-and-rolls, which was one of the reasons Madrid had been able to get back in the game. The frustration cost the visitors, who now have the same record as their archrivals, but have lost twice to them, and so are disadvantaged in case of a tie. The next three games are going to decide everything for both teams as they both will be visiting Vitoria to face Laboral, games that, to a large degree, are going to decide qualification.