By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
Ask any Euroleague veteran to name you some of the most difficult gyms to play as a guest and Siena’s PalaEstra will be among the top five. However, this Euroleague season doesn’t include PalaEstra, despite the usual presence of defending Italian champions Siena.
Yes, the team has a different roster with too many new faces, almost every key player of last season’s success left and at times Daniel Hackett seems to be fighting on his own. Still, after four games into the season and two home defeats by Galatasaray and Olympiacos, one of the biggest differences is the gym.
According to Euroleague rules, Siena as a A license team had to move to a bigger arena. For many years there were plans of building a new gym in Siena, but that never happened and it will be hard to imagine this changing in the immediate future, because of the European financial crisis which also affects the club and its biggest sponsor, “Monte dei Paschi” bank, with the sponsoring deal between the two sides ending the upcoming summer.
The Florence gym is modern compared to PalaEstra, can have up to 8000 seats, but things are not always what they seem. As the club announced, the game against Olympiacos was a sold out, so the players of coach Crespi could also count on the support of their fans. That was not exactly case. A section of the stands behind the basket was closed due to security reasons, according to Euroleague 6.755 fans were present and the pressure that the Reds felt on and off the court was nothing compared to the past.
In every game played in PalaEstra, there were 5.500 people almost hanging over the players, seated really close to the court, shouting, even spitting some times – they shouldn’t, but they did – and guests could feel that this was not a friendly environment. In Florence, this is not possible. There is much space between the court and the stands, the gym is bigger and while this is how things should be, for Siena it’s one more problem.
This year’s roster clearly has less quality than ever. That’s why this team would need even more a fearful gym in order to “steal” some wins. After a 0-4 start, with six games left in the regular season, Siena is already hunting a miracle in order to get the ticket to Top16. That means winning in the next road game at Malaga is probably the last chance for a realistic come back for Siena, having already lost on the road to Bayern Munich and Zielona Gora, the two teams which the Italians will host until the end of the regular season. Unicaja will be the third, so next week expect a do or die game.