By Antonis Stroggylakis / info@eurohoops.net
After six straight wins – the latest one being a historic 30-point rout over reigning EuroLeague champion CSKA Moscow – Anadolu Efes coach Ergin Ataman believes that this team is superior to the 2019-2020 squad that had the top place in the EuroLeague standings before the cancelation of the season.
“Everybody is asking me if we found the same level as last year. No, we’re better than last year,” Ataman said in his opening statement after the match vs. CSKA. He proceeded to use the words “perfect” and “perfectly” to describe various aspects of Efes’ performance, in a manner he’s done multiple times over the last weeks and during his team’s spotless run.
His players have given him a good reason to do so. Efes’ victories have been of triumphant proportions since the 2019 EuroLeague finalists have won their last six games with an average margin of 19.5 points.
A week ago, Efes obliterated Fenerbahce Beko, their traditional Turkish rival, 106 – 74 on the road. Some days afterward, they registered a new club record for 3-pointers with 18 while they comfortably beat Valencia 99 – 83.
The second win of Efes’ streak took place at Barcelona against the local team that had prevailed in six games in a row. After that match, Ataman mentioned that Efes will “finish the history that we started to make last year.” The 2019-2020 Efes was 24-4 in EuroLeague when the coronavirus pandemic forced the season to shut down and was widely considered the big favorite to win the title. Shane Larkin, Efes’ marquee star, was on track to win MVP by being an unstoppable scoring while registering a couple of record-breaking scoring outputs.
Last season’s Efes indeed looked nearly unbeatable, as its record suggests and possibly had the biggest championship potential among contenders. There was the devastating backcourt duo of Larkin and Vasilije Micic, the DPOY-quality impact of Chris Singleton, Krunoslav Simon and Rodrigue Beaubois providing extra force to a ten-ton offensive punch, a decorated former “Euroleague Best Defender” like Bryant Dunston or Tibor Pleiss who often dominated inside the paint. And Ataman had them all working together with enviable chemistry, only to be unable to see how the fruits of this labor will ultimately turn out in a Final Four.
This year, Efes struggled with a couple injury issues especially in the first leg of the regular season and suffered some heavy losses . The ugliest one was a 35-point defeat to CSKA in December.
Some months later, Ataman and his players got a bit of a payback by forcing CSKA to its biggest loss in the modern (post-2000) EuroLeague era.
“We showed great character tonight. We had a very bad time in Moscow three months ago when we lost against them,” Ataman said. “But we had a two or three-hour meeting in Moscow after the game and I saw that character tonight. It’s very important for our future, for our goal this season in the EuroLeague.”