By Panos Katsiroubas/ info@eurohoops.net
The magnifying Glass focuses its attention on all the European courts of Turkish Airlines Euroleague and each week it will choose to examine through its basketball lens some of the games that stole the show in the top competition!
A foretaste of the Top 16!
A great game with Top 16 flavor took place in Moscow as Fenerbahce Istanbul – even though it was already their group’s winner and had no special motivation – defeated Khimki Moscow Region in a contest that turned into a thriller and was determined on the last two plays. As an overall picture, we could say that the team that won was the one that made the most sensible choices, but also had a larger element of cohesion and teamwork in their game. Khimki head coach Rimas Kurtinaitis’s team had to cope with the significant absence of Paul Davis, an absence that deprived the team of strength and aggressiveness in the post. The home team relied almost entirely on the excellent talent and basketball “craziness” of the teams guards. Even from the very first quarter, Khimki’s ball circulation was limited and ineffective, and as a result the shots attempted came in isolated situations, with Tyrese Rice and Alexey Shved scoring 21 of the hosts’ 26 points after 10 minutes. From that point onward, the Fenerbahce defense tightened up and didn’t allow Khimki to score easily, except for some difficult drives by Zoran Dragic and Tyler Honeycutt. Fenerbahce had much better levels of ball circulation and creation, read the mismatches well after switches on the screens and struck inside the paint.
In the creative part, we saw Luigi Datome setting up plays from the central lane to great effect. It’s telling that after 26 minutes of playing time the assists were 17 for the visitors compared to 7 for the home team, with Jan Vesely, Ekpe Udoh and Pero Antic having scored 30 of their teams 50 points close to the basket. In the fourth quarter, Khimki somewhat changed their approach on offense and tried to get points and also create from the post, something that they managed to do. Marko Todorovic scored, and together with James Augustine, passed the ball well in the gaps created for two big open shots by Shved. The game was hanging by a thread and Fenerbahce head coach Zeljko Obradovic trusted the hot hands of his backcourt players. Good screens away from the ball and immediate executions from Bogdan Bogdanovic and Bobby Dixon provided solutions in offense, as did Vesely, who was consistently excellent throughout the whole game. The winning basket for Fenerbahce was made by Bogdanovic on a tip-in following a missed free throw by Udoh. On the last play, Fenerbahce’s defensive sensor worked well, with Udoh stealing the ball and taking away Khimki’s opportunity to look for a winning shot. That defense held Khimki to 42 points in the last three quarters and was Fenerbahce’s vehicle for victory.
Out of the Top 16 for the first time in their history
In the first of Round 10s two life-or-death games, Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv might have won in the end, but it was a win with no impact as they couldn’t reach the desired +11 score difference they needed against host Darussafaka Dogus Istanbul, which is now celebrating a qualification to the Top 16 in its Euroleague debut. The 2014 champions will miss the Top 16 for the first time in their history. Darussafaka head coach Oktay Mahmuti’s team tried from the start to strike at the slow recovery of Maccabi‘s defense on the perimeter and close to the basket. The strategy was right and from the start open shots were found, with Luke Harangody starting out warm from the perimeter, but also Semih Erden and Furkan Aldemir having a party under Maccabi’s basket. Maccabi boss Zan Tabak’s players had a lot of problems and couldn’t even secure the defensive rebounds, with Darussafaka renewing 10 attacks up to the 15th minute and scoring 14 second-chance points. From that point onwards, the teams lost their aggressiveness, focused heavily on defense and their productivity fell dramatically.
Maccabi’s lack of players to get the ball to the basket cost them throughout the whole regular season. Trevor Mbakwe’s 2 two-pointers came from out near the foul line and only Arinze Onuaku scored in the post. The positive aspect for the visitors was that they improved their defense, blocking the lanes and forcing Darussafaka to shoot a lot from the perimeter, without much success after the first few minutes and before reaching the final quarter. The last 10 minutes started out with the home team coming on the court with determination and the visitors losing their concentration primarily on offense. This “dead” stretch cost Maccabi on defense as well, with mistakes in cohesion that led to open shots for Darussafaka. In the last minutes, Tabak’s players made a last counter-attack and managed to tie the game 2 minutes before the end with a shot from the perimeter.
At that point, the strategy from Maccabi’s bench was something rarely seen: to try and take the game into overtime in order to be able to have more time to pursue the desired +11. This tactic didn’t pay off and Maccabi, despite winning the game, will not continue in the competition but rather play in the Eurocup. Overall, Maccabi paid for the very mediocre chemistry they had, but also for the fact that there weren’t many players on the roster who have any special approach to defense. Their defensive performances were quite bad in most games, while a consistent threat in their post-up game was clearly missing as well. Based on this image in these 10 games, it’s justified that Maccabi won’t continue in the competition, something that is unbelievable when we consider that 21 months ago the team’s players celebrated winning the trophy.
First place for Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar
With first place in their group at stake, there was a great game early Friday as Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar made an epic comeback in the fourth quarter against FC Barcelona Lassa, with the victory largely coming as a result of a small line-up and tight defense. The first half was characterized by mutual offensive neutralization between the two teams. Defense was the name of the game and both teams had trouble getting into a rhythm in terms of scoring. Barcelona head coach Xavi Pascual’s team had better ball circulation and produced more open shots thanks also to excellent movement and screens away from the ball. In the second half, both teams started making better offensive choices, with Lokomotiv striking back through the pick-and-roll game. Taking advantage of Ante Tomic’s slow returns after the screens, Kyrylo Fesenko and Malcolm Delaney finished plays whether passing or driving in the paint. Barcelona responded in the same way, with their emblematic captain assuming responsibility.
Juan Carlos Navarro was unstoppable in the third quarter, took advantage of every screen he got and bombarded the home team’s basket. At the same time, he did a great job as a creator, too, receiving the ball out in the wings and passing to Tomic on the pick-and-roll. The two of them scored 23 of their team’s 25 points in the third quarter to maintain a six-point lead, with Navarro having his best Euroleague game in almost two years, with 22 points and 3 assists. In the last quarter, Lokomotiv head coach Georgios Bartzokas lined up a team of kamikazes on defense and in the end he was vindicated. With Delaney and Dontaye Draper at the guard positions and Chris Singleton and Anthony Randolph as the big men, the home team started pressing tremendously and spread its defense to all corners of the half court. Pressure on the ball, denying passes, aggressiveness and powerful hedge-outs essentially locked down Barcelona’s offense and prevented good circulation of the ball.
The visitors committed 5 turnovers in the first 5 minutes of the last quarter and conceded easy points in transition, while Delaney struck with shots and drives against Barcelona’s defensive switches and excellently distributed the ball to the wings. The American guard finished the game with 19 points and 9 assists, when in the first half he had just 2 points. The offensive rebounds that the home team collected finally tipped the balance in its favor, with Barcelona having struggling tremendously not just to score, but even shoot under good conditions.
Epic qualification!
In the second direct matchup that determined a qualification, Crvena Zvezda Telekom Belgrade subjugated FC Bayern Munich in Belgrade and they did so mostly because of the excellent start and finish that they had in the game. In those two parts of the game, the player who made the difference was none other than Stefan Jovic. The Serbian guard had an amazing game, masterfully organizing his team’s offense. He finished with 13 assists and participated in every basket of his team in the last 5 minutes. The offensive axis for head coach Dejan Radonjic’s team was the classic pick-and-roll that isolates two players, who almost always were Jovic and Maik Zirbes. The visitors were punished in every way they chose to defend. When they chose to defend in two-on-two situations, they conceded a basket either by Jovic’s drives or midrange shots, or by Zirbes finishing inside the paint. After the first few minutes, Bayern chose to send help from the wings, which is when the visitors conceded open shots from the excellent shooters Quincy Miller and Marko Simonovic.
The home team scored 22 points in the first 5 minutes and 31 by the end of the first quarter. From that point onwards, Bayern toughened up its defense, pressed hard on the ball and obstructed all screens, getting Zvezda out of rhythm. On offense, Bayern found solutions from Dusko Savanovic’s long-distance shots but also from Deon Thompson, who provided solutions inside the paint and from mid-range shots. Especially in the third quarter, the visitors managed to steal many balls and struck in transition at every opportunity. Zvezda were down 11 points (56-67) at the start of the fourth quarter and they were looking for a hero to unlock an offense that had scored just 25 points in the previous 20 minutes. That hero was found and his name is Marko Guduric. The young shooter gave his team unexpected big shots after screens on the ball.
He scored 9 of his 16 points in 3 minutes and got Zvezda back in the game. The game’s last 5 minutes were a repetition of the first 5, with Jovic organizing and Zirbes and Miller executing. The visitors tried to confront them with shorter line-ups without any success, while on offense too Bayern couldn’t get near the basket and was confined to difficult, well-guarded shots from the perimeter. This is a great accomplishment and a huge challenge for Zvezda, who had a really bad start and weren’t especially convincing, but who improved a lot along the way and got the qualification fairly.
CSKA Moscow paid back in kind
A big win and first place in the group came CSKA Moscow‘s way in Andalusia against Unicaja Malaga on Friday. The game had two sides, with the Spanish team being impressive in the first half, but in the second coming up against a defense that could really “bite” and essentially took them out of the game. Unicaja coach Joan Plaza’s players came into the game with a lot of momentum: they were very aggressive and always sought the best choices. Nemanja Nedovic and Edwin Jackson scored big shots either through good ball circulation or off the dribble. They made things very hard for their opponents at the other end of the court, too, blocking lanes and essentially prohibiting CSKA’s pick-and-roll, a big part of the visitors’ offense. CSKA was forced to attempt many shots from the perimeter and finished the first half with 17 attempted three-pointers. In the second half, CSKA was transformed, mostly due to its efficiency on defense.
The visitors essentially denied every pass in the paint, shut off spaces with something that looked like a zone press that changed to man-to-man, with Nikita Kurbanov being the key player. The Spanish team was forced to shoot behind the arc on the majority of their attacks and couldn’t distribute the ball nor create imbalances in the opposing defense. The number of 4 assists and 10 turnovers in the second half is characteristic of the difficulty that Unicaja had in creating and in reading the defense. In the first half, the corresponding numbers were 8 assists and 4 turnovers. On the other side, CSKA head coach Dimitrios Itoudis’s players, spearheaded by Nando De Colo, got in the paint, unlocked the defense of the home team and got much better and open shots from the perimeter. In the end, the game wasn’t competitive, with the visitors getting the win and first place in the group, taking revenge for an earlier defeat on their home court.