Obradovic knows

By Arale Weisberg
 
Few people are considered as prestigious as Zeljko Obradovic in Israel. Panathinaikos loses at home to Milan and Kazan? The people in Israel think that it must be on purpose, because Zoc wants to shake his players. Coach getting a critical technical foul? He knows what he is doing, and he’ll earn that call next time.
 
Actually, the Israelis are not that wrong. PAO’s coach is an artist. He won eight European trophies – which puts him second in the history, only after the whole club of Real Madrid.
 
After beating Maccabi so easily in the first game, nobody could imagine that 48 hours later the yellows will be closer to the Final Four. Panathinaikos is not Olympiacos, we thought, Diamantidis is not Spanoulis, and Obradovic is not Ivkovic.
 
But we were wrong. The big victory of Maccabi against 18.000 fanatics in OAKA is a great achievement; probably one of the greatest ones of the Israeli powerhouse since the great legacy of 2004 & 2005. They need only two home victories in order to get the ticket for Istanbul – but everybody knows – it ain’t over till you-know-who sings. Nobody is referring to the mission as accomplished. Beating PAO three consecutive times in seven days seems unnatural.
 
And that’s all thanks to Obradovic. Panathinaikos lost its head in the fourth quarter of game 2, throwing eight consecutive shots from beyond the arc; When Maccabi had no-one inside the paint, Aleks Maric sat on the bench. But the Israeli media doesn’t speak bad about the Serbian fox. After all, he knows better what he is doing.
 
Zoc is sitting on PAO’s bench for 13 years now. At that period of time, Maccabi had seven different coaches. They made ten changes at the coach position. And now, so they hope, the yellows have their own Obradovic. David Blatt managed to get the best out of his players for the second year in a row – and nobody will take that away from him even if Panathinaikos eventually wins this series.
 
Nokia Arena will host a big celebration on Tuesday. Sarunas Jasikevicius returns there for the first time as an opponent of Maccabi, and the fans will show him enormous respect – as they did when Arriel McDonald and Nikola Vujcic came back home.
 
When Saras is at Nokia, historical things usually take place. The great rivalry between the yellows and the greens is set for yet another remarkable chapter. And the feeling is that it will not be over before game five in Athens.