By Panos Katsiroumpas/ info@eurohoops.net
CSKA Moscow, Olympiacos, Real Madrid and Fenerbahce are ready for the battles of the semifinals of this year’s Final Four, which is going to be hosted in the Sinan Erdem Dome, and the Magnifying Glass is going to analyze the two big appointments for the readers of Eurohoops as only… we know!
In the first semifinal, the active European champions, CSKA Moscow – with Dimitiris Itoudis’s team wanting to win the EuroLeague for the second year in a row – are going up against Olympiacos, who are the last team to achieve what CSKA Moscow are aiming for this season.
The two teams have encountered each other three times in the Final Four, with Olympiacos the winner of all three clashes. Their first clash was in the Final of 2012, in the same arena the competition is being held this year. Olympiacos, with a basket by Georgios Printezis in the last second, defeated CSKA and won their second title. The other two victories for Olympiacos came in semifinals, in 2013 in London and in 2015 in Madrid. In the two games this season, CSKA Moscow prevailed 75-81 in the Peace & Friendship Stadium and 90-86 in Moscow in the game that closed out the regular season.
Analyzing the two gladiators
The truth is that this is a battle with a favorite and an outsider, even though these don’t exist in the Final Four and history has given us many examples not to use such terms.
CSKA are a team with unreal talent, and they play at a very high tempo. They are the best team in the competition in terms of pace and second best in offensive rating, something that shows they like to create the conditions for a threat from the very first seconds of their possessions.
Of course, the team’s extremely talented and fast guards and forwards have a very large share in this. The truth is that Dimitris Itoudis’s players look for points in transition at every opportunity, since they clearly have the roster to back something like this. Milos Teodosic’s razor-sharp mind and magic passes, Nando De Colo’s ability to run the entire court, but also the speed of the rest of the guards, create excellent conditions for transition for the Russian team. At the same time, players like Nikita Kurbanov, Andrei Vorontsevich and Kyle Hines can be threats in this way of playing since they are fast and athletic, with explosive finishes.
In 5-on-5 situations, CSKA are excellent in reading the game, but also in creating good spacing. This is how they are able to spread out their offense wide and create the conditions for a lot of open shots.
The Russian team’s axes in set play are clearly De Colo and Teodosic. This season, aside from the classic pick-and-roll game, they’ve been using a running hand off pick a lot, which creates a tremendous imbalance in rival defenses. This happens because both De Colo and Teodosic have the ability to run with the ball in this hand off situation and create a direct threat, since the defense has to have complete harmony and understanding in order not to give up any open shots or a lane to the basket in that case.
The two of them can execute with the same ease from the perimeter as well as from mid-range, while they have no problem putting the ball on the floor and attacking the paint. Aside from that, if they themselves cannot find a way to score and the defense has restricted them, they look for the best pass.
We shouldn’t forget that CSKA have two of the best pick-and-roll finishers in Kyle Hines and James Augustine, while at the same time they spread out the game to the sides, having players that shoot with percentages close to 40% overall from the three-point line. Cory Higgins, Nikita Kurbanov, Andrei Vorontsevich, Vitaly Fridzon and Semen Antonov, can create a threat from the perimeter, while all of them are players with very high basketball IQs that can read the defense and make the best decisions.
Sometimes, the Russians selectively give screens to certain players along the wings so they can get some quick open shots. We might even see game in the post, not from the team’s big men but from De Colo and perhaps some of the forwards when they find themselves in mismatch situations or when they are facing smaller opponents.
Olympiacos play a more fixed and less unexpected kind of basketball. The truth is that in the 5-on-5 they depend almost entirely on Vassilis Spanoulis when he’s on the court, but the quality of this player is such that, no matter how well they read him, no matter what defensive plan he comes up against, he can make the difference.
Furthermore, Olympiacos are a very tough team in defense, with great intensity and athleticism in their game. Very often they even manage to find a rhythm in offense through good defensive efforts and whenever they have the chance, they strike in transition.
The absences of Daniel Hackett and Matt Lojeski are very important for the Greek team, since both have features that are missing from the rest of Olympiacos’s roster. In general, in set play, Olympiacos have only one player as a point of reference and that’s none other than Vassilis Spanoulis. In most possessions, Olympiacos’s captain doesn’t get involved in carrying the ball, but usually starts from the baseline, receiving a series of screens for the ball to end up in his hands. He usually likes to get the ball along the central lane, because this way he has a greater number of options after the screen. Of course, this doesn’t negate the fact that he can get pulled to the sides, get a screen in that part of the court and immediately function as an executioner. Unlike CSKA, Olympiacos play at a lower tempo and they rarely create a threat in the first seconds of a possession. Unless, of course, we’re talking about break situations or plays where they can go after attacks in transition.
Overall, Olympiacos are a pick-and-roll team and they will probably live and die by this way of playing. Of course, the free players are in no way static, but we often see cuts from the baseline, but also various shifts that can create the right spacing for an extra pass, which is very difficult for any defense to deal with, even more so for CSKA’s, which isn’t the best in this department.
Another important part of the offensive plan is clearly Georgios Printezis who, with his game and his creation from the post, can create a lot of problems for any defense.
Where it’s going to be decided
Defensive adjustments
Both teams have players for special missions in defense and we’ve already seen them utilizing them in such missions. We might see Kurbanov being Spanoulis’s personal guard, and on the other side, Papanikolaou chasing Teodosic or De Colo everywhere they go.
It’s also very important to see what kind of defenses the coaches are going to choose. Whether they are going to be switching defenses or defenses involving help, but also what kind of defensive adjustments each team is going to make. Olympiacos, especially, are overall a very good defensive team – with big bodies and athleticism – that can hold their own against any opponent. But CSKA too, have perhaps the best defender in the competition in switching defenses, Kyle Hines, who spoils his opponents’ game, steals balls, and generally tampers with their direction in offense, messing up with the head of anyone that stands in front of him.
Risks and percentages from the perimeter
It’s almost certain that with the defensive choices each team is going to make, some risks will also emerge, risks that whichever of the two teams takes advantage of in the best way will automatically make them the favorites for the win. These can be some open shots from certain players, specific defensive tactics and so on.
The percentage of each team from the perimeter is also going to be very important. If Olympiacos manage to keep the Russian team under 40% then they have good chances of staying in the game to the end. Just as long as Olympiacos are not off, since it is certain that, through CSKA’s defensive risks, some open shots will come up, mainly from the 3 and 4 positions.
The star players’ assist/turnover ratio
The pressure each team will decide to put on their opponent’s star players will clearly shape this ratio. In every game they lost this season, CSKA had great difficulty getting the ball to De Colo and Teodosic and the pressure on them was relentless. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the two of them will remain low in their scoring. They might score 40 points between them but if they remain low in terms of creation and succumb to several turnovers, the defensive plan will have been justified. The rule, from CSKA’s games this season, is that if this ratio is close to 2/1 then the Russian team usually wins, but when it’s closer to 1/1, then they automatically have a tough go of it and most times they lose.
To a large extent, the same applies to Vassilis Spanoulis in Olympiacos’s games, as he’s the most influential player, both in terms of creation as well as execution.
In conclusion
My personal opinion is that we’re going to see a dogfight. In the Final Four, the teams’ offensive output usually drops compared to the regular season and this is something that suits Olympiacos. In a series CSKA would most likely qualify – the easy way or the hard way – but the nature of the Final Four is such that it doesn’t allow predictions.
Olympiacos are a very tough team, with excellent chemistry, and they function as a unit on the court and not selfishly, and this is what gives them the advantage in games like this. On the other hand, CSKA’s quality and class are such that, perhaps only Real can match in this Final Four. I think that, in the end, we’re going to see a game with a slower pace, with a score-line that won’t go too high and one that will quite possibly be decided at the end.