By Panos Katsiroumbas/ 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!
They’re back, after 8 years
Vitoria is celebrating for their pride and joy. Laboral Kutxa Vitoria Gasteiz return to the Final Four after eight years and they did it in an absolutely emphatic fashion against a Panathinaikos Athens team that was unable to react for the greatest part of the series. Head coach Velimir Perasovic’s team won the third battle of the series as well, relying on exactly the same weapons that gave them the first two wins and despite the fact that, for yet another game, they played without Tornike Shengelia, Fabien Causeur and Adam Hanga. Laboral’s two amazing guards, Mike James and Darius Adams, pulled apart every defensive plan that Panathinaikos had, creating holes in the defense in every way.
Overall, they scored close to 40 points per game, which means as much as half of their team’s offensive output. They saved their best show for the third and final game. In the first half, all the work was done by James, who was amazing on defense as well as offense. Once again, we saw great work being done in terms of the movement and screens away from the ball that Laboral took excellent advantage of. We are speaking of the gaps that the guards created along the perimeter playing one-on-one, forcing Panathinaikos’s defense to send help, but also the amazing creative game of Ioannis Bourousis from the post.
Once more, the Greek center showcased his immense talent in reading the help and passing with excellent timing, either as his teammates cut inside, or along the perimeter. In all these plays, the visitors set up great screens for the players who received the ball, which gave them the room and the time to execute. His final figure of 6 assists, a career high, perfectly illustrates Bourousis’s effectiveness in creating for his teammates. The only points when Panathinaikos managed to react was with good defense at the end of the first half, and offensively early in the third quarter. In the first instance, Panathinaikos changed to a pure switching defense: Vince Hunter at center, it became harder for Laboral’s guards to drive. That change sparked a 7-0 run that trimmed Laboral’s lead from 12 points to 5. In the third quarter, Elliot Williams did a good job driving from the top of the key and making mid-range shots, which Laboral’s defense risked throughout the series, but Panathinaikos rarely took advantage of.
At that point, the home team seemed to be gaining momentum, but some missed shots by Panathinaikos and Darko Planinic saving some plays for Laboral kept the visitors in the game despite poor perimeter shooting, namely 0-for-10 on three-pointers the 18th to the 30th minute. In the fourth quarter, we witnessed an ultimate outbreak by Laboral’s perimeter players that finally tipped the series on their side. Adams scored 14 points in this quarter and executed under every circumstance, even when defended well. Bourousis, James and even Alberto Corbacho scored from everywhere, with Laboral making an unreal 7 of 10 three-pointers in the final 10 minutes. To Panathinaikos, these shots were like psychological stabbings. Laboral ran away with a double-digit lead, securing the qualification for Berlin. In what was Dimitris Diamantidis’s farewell, the Greek star exited his Euroleague career with a defeat but with a standing ovation by his teammates, opponents, the referees and fans that showed complete recognition of his talent and contribution to the game.
13 of 14 Final Fours for CSKA
The team that almost never misses a Final Four confirmed their quality for yet another year by overcoming the hurdle of Crvena Zvezda Telekom Belgrade in 3-0 sweep to become the first team qualified for Berlin. It’s the 13th time in the last 14 years that CSKA puts itself two victories away from winning the Turkish Airlines Euroleague title. In Game 3, the hurdle of Zvezda once again turned out to be higher than most expected, and for this reason we have to take our hats off to all the players and to Dejan Radonjic. The third game turned into a proper dogfight, with both teams playing incredibly hard.
Especially in the first half, the home team’s defense created huge problems for Milos Teodosic, forcing him to commit consecutive turnovers, and he would finish with 7, the most in his Euroleague career one game after having tied his previous high of 6. Despite this, CSKA Moscow found solutions early, thanks to the amazing Nando De Colo, who helped by both scoring and moving the ball. CSKA’s entire supporting cast had a great game, with Cory Higgins, Nikita Kurbanov and Andrey Vorontsevich playing good defense and hitting big shots. The first half was balanced and, due to a parade of free throws, lacked any special rhythm. After halftime CSKA’s defense made the difference, stopping Zvezda’s the pick-and-roll and transition game, two defensive aspects that the Russian team has improved upon. Higgins and Aaron Jackson pressed hard in defending the perimeter and impeding ball movement.
In the fourth quarter, relying on good defense and transition offense, Zvezda’s players narrowed the gap, which had reached 12 points late in the third quarter, 47-59, by scoring 16 points in 5 minutes, running at every opportunity and taking advantage of CSKA slow defensive transition. Now, with a single point between the two teams, CSKA made terrific offensive choices, converting all the big shots in the game’s last 3 minutes. With good interior screening and reads, CSKA circulated the ball ideally and found the best choices for crucial points that determined the outcome. The fact the Zvezda was not able to win any games didn’t do justice to their effort in challenging CSKA or their resilience throughout the series. They were definitely one of the surprises of the competition and offered us beautiful moments and talented young players.
The nemesis of the champions
In the series from which we all expected an epic, Fenerbahce Istanbul was imposing and dominant at containing Real Madrid’s strengths and swept with a Game 3 victory in Madrid and reach a second consecutive Final Four. It was the second year in a row that head coach Zeljko Obradovic’s team knocked out the active European champions. Last year it was Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv who lost 3-0 to Fenerbahce in the playoffs and handed over their crown, while this year Madrid went down the same road. If we this series had a title it would be “The Rhapsody of Zeljko Obradovic”.
In the 120 minutes played, he had an answer for every offensive weapon Madrid possessed and essentially didn’t even give them a chance to get into a rhythm and feel any psychological edge. Ekpe Udoh’s contribution in this series was huge as he played both his own role and that of the absent Jan Vesely. He was amazing on defense, whether switching, playing man-to-man, or hedging and recovering from the perimeter with his unbelievable speed and explosiveness. He also had excellent timing in reading the moves of opposing guards whenever they tried to penetrate, functioning as the ultimate rim protector with his many blocks in a helping role.
Fenerbahce also got amazing pressing defense on the ball that succeeded in taking away the creativity and scoring of Madrid’s guards. Madrid scored 70 points on average in the playoffs, 15 fewer than in the Top 16. Their three-point shooting dropped from 37% to 27%, while their assist/turnover ratio was precisely one, which means that Madrid had the same number of assists as turnovers. In that ratio, Madrid had been the best team in the competition before the playoffs began. After relative balance, especially on defense, in the first half, the game was essentially decided in the third quarter. That’s when Bogdan Bogdanovic showed up and started scoring his favorite shots behind ball screens. Madrid didn’t have a center who could run at him on switches and Bogdanovic took advantage by shooting well but also driving to the basket at every opportunity. He scored 17 points, all of them in the second half and, together with Luigi Datome made big shots of great difficulty that murdered their opponents. With their defense still strong on every level, Obradovic’s team even reached a 17-point lead on the way to a 63-75 victory that marked Madrid’s lowest offensive output at home this year.
The second-best defensive performance in Madrid this season belonged to Laboral Kutxa Vitoria Gasteiz, who held Madrid to 68 points at Barclaycard Center. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that these two teams are going to face each other in the semifinals in Berlin. Madrid made a desperate attempt to turn the game around, scoring 6-for-10 three-pointers in the last quarter (until that point they were 3-for-23), but the gap was big and time was short. More than deservedly, Fenerbahce is heading to Berlin, while for Madrid a disappointing year comes to an end with a minus sign, since they had a 12-15 Euroleague record a year after winning the trophy.
Lokomotiv stayed alive
We had a fantastic Game 4 in Barcelona between FC Barcelona Lassa and Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar. Playing their best game in the series, the visitors from Lokomotiv prevailed in overtime after an amazing contest. Lokomotiv’s entire offensive plan struck on Ante Tomic from the beginning of the game to the end, but it was decisive in the last minutes of the regulation time and in overtime. Essentially, all the plays of Georgios Bartzokas’s team targeted Tomic, with all balls screens being set up by the player that guarded him. Then Lokomotiv’s guards attacked with drives or mid-range shots on Tomic’s slow hedge outs. If that didn’t work out there was plan B, with Anthony Randolph and Chris Singleton pulling back to the perimeter in order to force the opponent big man to come out. Then they attacked him by putting the ball on the floor or shooting from the perimeter. Singleton and Randolph scored 42 points together – most of them with this tactic – 20 of which came in the final minutes of the game and the 5 minutes of overtime. Barcelona head coach Xavier Pascual’s hands were tied by the foul trouble to Samardo Samuels and the injury to Joey Dorsey, his other center. He didn’t take the risk of turning the game into a wild spectacle by trying small line-ups with Justin Doellman playing center.
In their own defense, Lokomotiv kept to a switching defense – risking mismatches – that at some points of the game worked out for them, while in others, like at the end of the third and beginning of fourth quarter, had no effect. The bad thing for Barcelona was that they didn’t get too many points from the numerous mismatches that Tomic had with Malcolm Delaney and Matt Janning inside the paint, with Barcelona’s big man not being aggressive and most of the time looking for passes. Lokomotiv also tried to strike on Juan Carlos Navarro and Carlos Arroyo with isolations along the perimeter, something that paid off only in the early stages of the game. Aside from Randolph’s amazing performance and Delaney’s full game, it’s also worth noting Victor Claver’s excellent appearance. The Spanish forward was a catalyst for Lokomotiv on defense. He was excellent in every defensive capacity: one-on-one defense, traps, rebounds, blocks. He also scored great baskets and contributed a lot with offensive rebounds and second-chance points. Now the series moves to Krasnodar for a roll of the dice that will send the winners to Berlin to play in the semifinal against CSKA Moscow.