By Panos Katsiroubas/ info@eurohoops.net
The Magnifying Glass focuses its attention on all the courts of Turkish Airlines Euroleague and each week examines through its basketball lens some of the games that stole the show in Europe’s top competition!
Game 2: Laboral survives overtime drama!
An unbelievable Game 2 between Laboral Kutxa Vitoria Gasteiz and Panathinaikos Athens in Vitoria gave fans all the entertainment they could want. Velimir Perasovic‘s team left their soul on the court. Even with three players missing from its starting lineup due to injury, Laboral defeated the Greek team in overtime despite Dimitris Diamantidis’s breathtaking performance. A general conclusion that can be made is that the team that won was the one with the most talent along the perimeter, but also the one that was better prepared. Once again, like in the first game of the series, Panathinaikos had a lot of trouble stopping almost all of Laboral’s plays from the perimeter. Mike James and Darius Adams beat their defenders on most occasions. Whenever they encountered switching defenses, they attacked with speed and through good screens found open lanes all the way to Panathinaikos’s basket. Davis Bertans created big problems for Panathinaikos with his fast moves behind screens, but Aleksandar Djordjevic’s players dealt with these kinds of screens way too softly, too. Overall, Laboral had good movement and many screens away from the ball in comparison with Panathinaikos who, aside from trying to get the ball in the paint, resorted often to forcing attempts as the shot clock expired. One aspect in which the visitors improved was defending the post, with Ognjen Kuzmic playing excellent defense on Ioannis Bourousis throughout most of the game.
Panathinaikos’s offense worked well only when Diamantidis stepped on the court. The legendary guard read well Laboral’s pick-and-roll defense and finished the plays with either drives to the basket or shots behind screens. He scored 17 points, dished 6 assists and took the game to overtime with an unbelievable three-pointer with 8 seconds left in the fourth quarter. Diamantidis contributed on defense as well, with good positioning whenever Bertans tried to post up and also on help defense and traps. Eventually, Laboral decided to run its offense through Bourousis inside. If he wasn’t able to score in the post, he looked for his guards cutting from the top after screens or passed to the perimeter for set shooters coming off screens. And if none of those options were available, the ball went out to the perimeter for a pure isolation game by either Adams or James. Especially in overtime, Bourousis was amazing, scoring and passing excellently. In the end, Laboral survived its suicidal tendencies, unlike at the end of regular time, when Panathinaikos failed to tie again despite a pure post-up move in a one-on-one situation by Miroslav Raduljica, who missed a shot that he often makes. Laboral survived a tremendous game and will now go to Athens with a big advantage, looking for a win to clinch its return to the Final Four for the first time since 2008.
Game 2: Hines decided thriller in Moscow
Many of us, when the playoffs matchups were known, assumed that CSKA Moscow would have the easiest task against Crvena Zvezda Telekom Belgrade, authors of what was already a great run just making it this far. Despite this, in Game 1, Zvezda fought and was defeated with great difficulty, showing toughness but also strong preparation in many aspects of the game. The second game was amazing, with Dejan Radonjic’s team taking CSKA‘s highly-touted squad to the limit. The visitors had done their homework, especially on Milos Teodosic, for whom they made things very difficult, forcing him into bad choices and turnovers. His defenders challenged him hard on every play, were not afraid of contact and were successful at reading and breaking up screens. Teodosic, who had been the MVP of Game 1, was now completely out of his game, with just 1 assist and 5 turnovers, 4 of which came in the first half. These turnovers gave Zvezda several opportunities to score on the open court, something that they took advantage of on every occasion. But if Teodosic was down, he would come back, too.
The visitors from Belgrade read the game well on offense, too. Radonjic’s players once again created a lot of problems for CSKA through pick-and-rolls. Maik Zirbes’s pin-downs in the paint forced CSKA to send help from the sides. Zvezda read this help and with good, crisp passes created imbalances in CSKA’s defense, which they punished with both outside shots and drives whenever the key left open. Marko Simonovic, Tarence Kinsey, Branko Lazic, Quincy Miller: all found good shots and punished CSKA’s defense. Zvezda finished the game with 18 assists versus only 12 for CSKA, while in the first half CSKA had 11 turnovers and Zvezda 2, a number that was enough to explain the visitors’ lead at intermission. In the second half, anticipating the defensive problems, Dimitris Itoudis introduced a kamikaze lineup – Cory Higgins and Aaron Jackson at the guard positions, Nikita Kurbanov and Andrey Vorontsevich as forwards, and Kyle Hines at center – with the aim of turning the game around through defense.
With this lineup, CSKA was able to switch a lot, relentlessly pressure the ball, and protect the paint with speed, athleticism and explosiveness. They forced the visitors to commit 5 turnovers and held them to just 12 points despite being forced to defend second and third attacks due to Zvezda’s numerous offensive rebounds. The final minutes were a fight to the end, with both defenses winning most of the battles. Stefan Jovic and Teodosic scored identical three-pointers after good ball movement, and after a turnover by Nando De Colo, Zvezda had a last attack to steal the win. CSKA’s coaching staff chose an athletic lineup in order to be able to switch on defense. After a screen on the ball, Jovic came up against Hines, an amazing defender in these kinds of situations. Hines shut off the lane and forced Jovic to commit a turnover. The American center was the main reason for his team’s win, as in addition to his defense, Hines also contributed 19 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists. He missed only one shot.
Game 1: Barcelona’s missed opportunity
Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar and FC Barcelona Lassa kicked off their own series with a big thriller in Krasnodar. In the end, even though they had trouble finding the target for a big part of the game, Lokomotiv got the win, with the visitors losing a game that should have been theirs. Both teams played at a relatively low tempo and didn’t try opening up the rhythm at any point in the game. As it turned out, the slow tempo suited Xavier Pascual’s team, as the visitors tried to take advantage of the mismatches created by Lokomotiv’s switching defense. Barcelona did so with great consistency, scoring the majority of their points in this way in the first half of the game. Lokomotiv did good work in offense, too, and created openings with either perimeter players or with big men launching shots from outside. However, Lokomotiv couldn’t take full advantage of good ball circulation that created many open shots because its shooters were frustratingly off target from the perimeter.
Overall, Lokomotiv made just 5 of 23 three-point shots, many of which were taken under no pressure whatsoever. Barcelona seemed to be controlling the game, but center Joey Dorsey’s injury changed everything, providing room for Lokomotiv big man Anthony Randolph to get his team back in the game. Starting from the perimeter, Randolph put the ball on the floor and either scored or drew fouls that took him to the free throw line, wearing down his opponents. He scored 9 consecutive points for his team and kept them in the game at a point when Barcelona had good movement from screens away from the ball to create open shots that Pau Ribas, Alex Abrines and Juan Carlos Navarro converted.
In this way, the visitors maintained leads of 6 to 8 points. With Matt Janning and Ryan Broekhoff, Lokomotiv spread out their offense across the entire width of the court and stretched Barcelona’s defense. This resulted in some shots from the corners, while in other instances Lokomotiv took advantage of Barcelona’s bad close-out defense and reached the basket with ease. Despite the offensive solutions that Lokomotiv had found, they remained being behind in the score. In the end, what won it for the hosts was their good defense but also Barcelona’s numerous missed opportunities with open shots and plays in transition. Pascual’s team didn’t score a single point for almost 5 minutes. Lokomotiv scored the fewest possible shots, but got a huge win. Through its defense, Lokomotiv limited Barcelona to just 8 points in the fourth quarter, and this was the main reason for the victory.
Game 1: Fenerbahce takes the first step
Fenerbahce Istanbul and Real Madrid came into the playoffs as the most intriguing pair of opponents one year after their semifinal battle at the Final Four in Madrid. Game 1 in Istanbul proved that this series has all the makings to become epic. In an endless chess match, Zeljko Obradovic and Fenerbahce dominated for 40 minutes, despite the absence of the amazing Jan Vesely. Madrid stepped on the court determined to play defense, something that the defending champs have done successfully in very few games this season. With Jeffery Taylor on Bobby Dixon and Sergio Llull on Bogdan Bogdanovic, they tried to confront talent with speed and explosiveness. The defensive filter worked in the beginning, with Fenerbahce having trouble creating open spaces, circulating the ball or getting good shots. Despite Vesely‘s absence, Pero Antic and Ekpe Udoh were both in the starting lineup, a surprise since they had recently alternated at center, with Luigi Datome and Nikola Kalinic covering the power forward position. Madrid might have held their Fenerbahce’s score down, but on offense, the visitors had great difficulty getting the ball inside the paint.
Most of Madrid’s shots came from the perimeter, with Udoh playing great hedge-and-recover defense, essentially blocking all passes to Gustavo Ayon. The fact that the Mexican center attempted just 1 shot in 25 minutes of playing time is largely due to Fenerbahce’s defense. Madrid boss Pablo Laso was forced to throw Sergio Rodriguez and Jaycee Carroll together into the game, a choice that considerably reduced the visitors’ defensive capability. Meanwhile, Obradovic downsized Fenerbahce’s line-up for a time, playing with Datome and Kalinic as his big men, which provided the home team with speed and driving ability from any position. With the simultaneous rise of Bogdanovic, they got the lead up to double-digits. Upon his return, Udoh scored on consecutive pick-and-rolls as Madrid’s defense lost all the battles in the second quarter. Fenerbahce was dominating, Madrid didn’t have any ideas, couldn’t find the target from the perimeter and had only 3 assists, the team’s low for an entire half this season.
In the second half, what got the visitors back in the game was the improvement of their defense against Bogdanovic and of their percentages from the perimeter. Furthermore, Laso’s players took advantage of some openings to drive to the basket. What couldn’t be changed, however, was the one-sidedness of inside offense, with Fenerbahce still dominant in the key. Madrid shot 34 three-pointers to just 28 two-pointers, numbers that made apparent the visitors’ difficulty in getting close to basket. At the same time, as soon as they found themselves behind in the score for the first time in the game, the hosts found their killer in Kostas Sloukas. The two-time Euroleague champion created openings after screens on the ball and in pure isolation plays, scoring 10 very crucial points in the last quarter and 17 in total, a figure that is also his personal best in the competition. Madrid continued with mediocre shooting influenced by its low number of assists, 10, as Rodriguez was held to zero by the very good defense he encountered. The first blood was spilled by Madrid, and two nights later, Fenerbahce would dominate even more to lead 2-0 as the series moves to Madrid.