By Panos Katsiroumpas/ info@eurohoops.net
Here we are, just hours before the Euroleague Final Four which will take place in Mediolanum Forum at Milan. The only clear thing is that on Sunday night we will have a new European Champion after two years of Olympiakos’ domination. We will try to breakdown the two semifinal games, analyzing as much as we can the game of both teams and of course we will predict the winner. So let’s see the semifinal between Maccabi Tel Aviv and CSKA Moscow.
The team from Tel Aviv qualified for the Final Four after beating in four games the hosts of the event, EA7 Milano, and they are the only team that advanced to the Final Four without a play offs home court advantage. Moreover the team from Israel have won all the five semifinals that they played in the final four the last eleven years. Their last defeat in a semifinal was back in 2002 when they lost to Panathinaikos in Bologna. On the other side CSKA Moscow advanced in the Final 4 after a five games battle against Panathinaikos. The Russian team lost in the semifinal and the final the two previous years in both cases against Olympiakos. Let’s see what we can expect from these two teams in their semifinal on Friday.
Little in common and many differences
The two opponents have some common characteristics and a lot of differences. It depends on coaches’ decisions how much of these characteristics we will see on the court of Mediolanum Forum.
The main common characteristic is that both teams like to run in the transition. They like to run a lot and in this game the feeling is that Maccabi will look more for points in transition because CSKA outmatches Maccabi in terms of size.
Maccabi is a team with a very talented back court but their game depends a lot on which player is used in the center position. If Schortsianitis is on the court, Maccabi is always looking for him inside the paint in almost every possession. He takes the ball and also takes the decision either to execute or pass back in the perimeter. So, it will be very important to see how coach Messina will try to stop Sofo. Normally he will send a double team on him in order to press him, make his executions more difficult and force him to pass the ball. If he decided to play him with one defender, then CSKA may very soon have key players like Kaun or Hines in foul trouble because Schortsianitis is just very difficult to be stopped just one opponent. CSKA has the depth and the size to send double teams and let him pass the ball with the chance of him making turnovers, as the Russian side has very good individual and team defenders.
The offensive plan of Maccabi differentiates a lot when Sofoklis sits on the bench and Tyus is on the court. They have much more movement in the attacking end, looking for pick and roll situations with Tyus who is a great finisher. In this situation an advantage for Maccabi is that they have many players in their back court with different characteristics that can run the pick and roll offense and this makes difficult for the teams that defend to have a stable defensive plan. They can execute the play either with Rice, Hickman, Ohayon, even with Ingles. If Maccabi does not have a good shot after the pick and roll, they like to play isolation games finding the weaknesses in their opponent’s defense and try either to execute from the perimeter or penetrate to the basket. They have good isolation players that can also pass the ball and create chances for an open shot. When Maccabi is playing an isolation offense they open the court a lot in order to have good distances that can give them good, open looks to the basket and they have players like Smith and David Blu who can execute from the perimeter very quickly.
A big difference is the size of the teams. Maccabi likes to play with undersized line ups with Smith, Blu and Landesberg – who is injured and we are not sure if he will be ready to go – in the power forward position in order to create threat from the perimeter. On the other side CSKA is playing with heavier and oversized line ups with Vorontsevich or Hines in the power forward position and sometimes they prefer to play with both Krstic and Kaun on the floor. The reasonable think is that CSKA will chose to play man to man defense and Maccabi will use some zone defense at least in parts of the game.
In the play offs against Panathinaikos CSKA played without Milos Teodosic and they faced many problems in terms of creation and ball movement. The Russian team had 4 assists less per game in the play offs compared to Top16. Aaron Jackson is a great isolation player and a very good defender who can press the ball but he doesn’t seems to trust his perimeter shot even without pressure and he is not as a good passer, as Teodosic. Pargo is running almost exclusively isolation plays.
With Teodosic on the court, CSKA becomes much more dangerous from the perimeter. The Serbian is a great shooter after screens in the ball or pick and rolls and he is also a great passer. The problem of Teodosic in such games is mental. If he faces some difficulties or lose some plays and make some mistakes, he can lose his concentration and have also bad executions without any logic at all. In that case, he could be the biggest disadvantage of his own team. His potential is very high but it’s not always there. Also he faces a lot of problems in man to man defense with athletic and quick guards like those of Maccabi. We focus on these two players from the Russian side because they were the MVP in the two wins of CSKA against Maccabi in the Top16. In the game in Moscow, Teodosic had 22 points (9/12 FG) and also 8 assists and in the game in Tel Aviv Aaron Jackson had his best game in this Euroleague season with 18 points, 5 rebounds and 3 assists. It is obvious that both have to play well in order to give their team an advantage over Maccabi.
When Teodosic is not on the court, CSKA becomes predictable in the offensive end, and plays a lot with Weems that is a very talented player in isolation plays. The Russian team uses as source of creation mainly Viktor Khryapa who does everything in the court. When there is Kaun on the floor the Russians are looking for pick and roll plays with him who has improved his efficiency a lot this year and is also good defender.
With Maccabi playing undersized, it will be logical to see Kyle Hines in the center position, especially when Tyus is on the court because he is very explosive and quick. Only Hines has the same characteristics from the Russian squad. However coach Messina don’t trust this line up and showed it during the season as he used Hines almost exclusively in power forward position in which Kyle is not so efficient. Let’s see if there will be a surprise from Messina in the semifinal.
Our pick is…
This will be a tough semifinal, CSKA is not playing well during the last couple of weeks, seems to be confused and that appears a lot in the court. They are very talented for sure but this is not enough. From the other side Maccabi has a good season and in our opinion this team is the best team that Maccabi had during the last five years. Also it’s very important that the fans of Maccabi will be the huge majority inside the Forum and the players of Blatt will feel like playing in Nokia Arena.
We will pick Maccabi as the winners…