By Nikos Varlas/ varlas@eurohoops.net
Nobody can deny facts and Zeljko Obradovic is still, according to his results, the top European basketball coach ever and the most successful one in European basketball history.
He has conquered eight Euroleague titles, sometimes with favorable odds (two wins in Greek soil as the coach of Panathinaikos in 2000 and in 2007, one with Sabonis and Joe Arlauckas in his roster in Real Madrid at Saragosa 1995), some other times after a little miracle (2002 at Bologna against then powerhouse Kinder and 2011 at Barcelona) and in some case with a biblical one (Partizan 1992, Juventut 1994).
However his season at Fenerbahce can be already considered a failure, considering the budget and the ambitions of the teams. And if you judge by his team’s performance during the Top16, then it’s a thunderous failure. His great streak of a 80% success in winning the Euroleague just in his first season in a new bench also took a hit.
Still the season started impressively for his team, thanks to the momentum of many of his players from Eurobasket 2013 who were already in the peak of their form after their national teams’ preparation. But when Obradovic started around the end of the regular season to practice like he is used to and also to add some important details to the game of his team, instead of improving the situation, things got out of hand.
So here are the main four mistakes of Zoc in his first season at Turkey.
- Obradovic doesn’t easily trust on the court American players, specially the ones who have no European experience. Despite having a big budget, something easily proven by the buy outs of Bjelica and Zoric, he just didn’t believed that an American player was fit for his plans. Despite the changes in modern basketball, the speed of the game and the athleticism factor, Zoc didn’t signed not even one American player. Bo McCalebb already had a contract and Pierre Jackson, an emergency signing after Kenan Sipahi‘s injury, is just a footnote on the rotation.
- The man who created the science of winning based on a roster of three or four top quality guard during his years in Panathinaikos, he had a team with no such a player, who would have the basketball IQ to create for the others. When you are winning with Diamantidis, Spanoulis and Jasikevicious, all of them bonafide floor generals, it’s hard to do the same without at least one player of the same mold. Bo is mainly a scorer who plays with his instinct, while Sipahi and Mahmutoglu are not ready yet to be leader and have the ball in their hands during clutch time.
- His roster is really mediocre or even bad at individual defense, which is the foundation of a team. Not even one of his stars (Preldzic, Bogdanovic, Bjelica, Kleiza, Zoric) is an above average player in this aspect of the game. The result was obvious. Fener couldn’t impose its tempo by defense in none of the crucial games.
- His reactions towards Nemanja Bjelica, Bo McCalebb and lately towards Arteaga may help his reputation of a no-nonsense man who can be the leader they were searching and will finally lead them to the promise land. Practically this behavior didn’t have any major positive effect on the team and that was proven beyond doubt on the court.
And now it’s time for the prediction: It’s 100% sure that Zeljko Obradovic will stay at Fenerbahce/ Ulker – after all he has a contract for next season – and he will start really early to work on his next season planning in order to take a personal “revenge”, something that will only benefit the ambitions of Fener and the millions of its fans.