By Panos Katsiroubas/ info@eurohoops.net
The Magnifying Glass focuses its attention on all the courts of the Turkish Airlines Euroleague and each week will choose to examine through its basketball lens some of the games that stole the show in the top competition!
Real Madrid stayed alive
Reigning champions Real Madrid managed to survive the first of three finals on the end of their regular season schedule. Against Fenerbahce Istanbul, they encountered many problems in the opening 20 minutes but for the first time left their defensive mark in the second half, managing to get the win. Head coach Pablo Laso tried many different lineups in the game and got valuable solutions. The home team’s start was sluggish, mainly on defense, with Madrid’s players failing to respond to Fenerbahce‘s ball movement and excellent executions, mostly by Luigi Datome. With an unusual lineup that we haven’t noticed before this season – Luka Doncic, Jaycee Carroll and Jeffery Taylor along the perimeter, and Andres Nocioni and Guillermo Hernangomez in the frontcourt – Madrid played amazing defense, blocked off the lanes to the basket, denied passes and made it very hard for Fenerbahce to shoot and circulate the ball. The outcome of this lineup was a 16-0 run that turned a 12-point deficit (16-28) into a four-point lead (32-28). Despite the counterattack, the visitors found the answers and managed to strike at the weak points of Madrid’s defense, when Nocioni was charged with his third foul and Laso was forced to reshuffle the line-up.
With the game hanging by a thread, Sergio Llull’s class on offense came to the fore as did Madrid’s tremendous defense along the perimeter. After a certain point, both teams approached the game with short lineups, which once again ended up helping the Spanish team, with their defense along the perimeter smothering the opponent and Taylor providing some tremendous defensive assistance in almost every part of the court. On offense, Llull took over the game and even though he was a bit hesitant at some points, in the end he struck at Fenerbahce’s switching defense and with successive drives gave the lead that led Madrid to victory, a victory keeps them alive in the hunt for a spot in the Top 16. The Spanish guard scored 12 of his 17 points in the last 10 minutes of the game. Jonas Maciulis and Taylor might have scored just 7 points between them, but they provided a lot of energy on defense and their contributions were huge even if not reflected in the statistics.
De Colo’s magic night
A great Game of the Week took place in Germany, where CSKA Moscow got the road win against Brose Baskets Bamberg. It was a night that belongs almost entirely to Nando De Colo. The French star did everything on the court, scoring and passing exceptionally. He finished the game with 27 points and 11 assists, ransacking the German defense. With the pick-and-roll game being their main course of action, CSKA scored in every way. Initially it was through penetrations deep inside Bamberg‘s switching defenses. As the game went on, the passes following the screen on the ball were either received by Kyle Hines inside the paint or resulted to open shots from the corners and the wings, with Cory Higgins, Nikita Kurbanov and Andrey Vorontsevich scoring frequently. This trio scored 41 points on 6-for-10 accuracy from the 6.75-meter arc and Hines had his Euroleague season high with 17 points.
Overall, head coach Dimitrios Itoudis’s team won the game due to their impressive offensive function. On the other side, for yet another game, we saw how well Bamberg works on all levels of the offense, with excellent circulation of the ball, good spacing and well-drilled actions in both set and transition plays. Bamberg had six double-digit scorers plus 18 assists with only 4 turnovers. The hosts couldn’t get anything more from this game because for everything that head coach Andrea Trinchieri tried defensively, CSKA had answers and solutions. When the defense closed down in the paint, the shots came from the perimeter, and when they blocked the passes out to the perimeter, they got punished in the two-on-two game through De Colo and Hines. A high-quality game between two great teams and two great coaches that are going to keep us company in the Top 16 as well.
They broke the streak
Round 8 will be remembered in Athens as the one in which Panathinaikos Athens ended its frustrating nine-game losing streak against rival FC Barcelona Lassa after two years, seven months and 18 days of trying. The main reasons for the victory were complete domination in the frontcourt and the great defense that Greens played for almost 30 minutes. In the first half, that defense was total. Relentless pressure on the ball, bodies everywhere, smart positioning in the switching defenses and the blocking of all lanes leading to the basket. The domination that was started on defense was completed in offense, with Miroslav Raduljica having a career best scoring night in the Euroleague with 25 points on 8-for-9 two-point and 9-for-9 free throw shooting. With Nick Calathes as the orchestrator, the ball went inside with great ease, not only to Raduljica but to the rest of the players who made moves without the ball. Panathinaikos made 18 of 28 shots from inside the paint and Barcelona’s defense struggled to move fast enough to stop the hosts’ good passing game. Head coach Aleksandar Djordjevic’s team worked really well on offense, were on target from the perimeter as well – something they lacked in previous games – and created 25 assists from 28 field goals, which indicates a high level of clear-headedness, concentration and teamwork for Panathinaikos.
Head coach Xavier Pascual’s team, trailing behind by 16 points shortly before the end of the third quarter, turned to a short line-up and put Panathinaikos in trouble. With three guards (Tomas Satoransky, Alex Abrines and Brad Oleson), Stratos Perperoglou in the “four” position and Shane Lawal at “five”, the visitors played good defense, rotated quicker and improved their transition game on both sides of the court. With this lineup, they also had many offensive creators, as well as players who could spread the floor and shoot from long-distance. The result was an offensive outbreak, with Barcelona closing the deficit to a single point, 71-70, with a 5-20 run over just 5 minutes. At that point, the home team came up with some big shots by the great Dimitris Diamantidis and James Feldeine, while Lawal’s elimination with 5 fouls weakened Barcelona on defense. It was a great game from Calathes, who neared a triple-double with 9 points, 7 rebounds and 10 assists, controlled the tempo and played excellent defense.
Concerto for machine guns
For the second consecutive week, Belgrade hosted an amazing thriller that was decided in the final minutes with Crvena Zvezda Telekom Belgrade winning once again against teams of great quality. After Real Madrid a week before, it was Khimki Moscow Region’s turn to succumb in the scorching Hala Pionir. Again, the axis of Zvezda’s offense game was pick-and-rolls in two-on-two situations with Maik Zirbes as the receiver. And again, the German center positioned himself very well to receive the ball and from there scored with ease. He had 27 points and collected 7 rebounds in what was another great night for him. For the second game in a row, head coach Dejan Radonjic’s guards struck at slow defensive reactions with drives, getting the largest percentage of their points inside the paint. To be more precise, they made 23 of 35 shots from inside the paint for 46 points total. Occasionally, Khimki successfully defended the pick-and-roll by placing its free players closer to the paint, closing down distances and creating a wall of bodies.
That’s when head coach Rimas Kurtinaitis’s players stole several balls and turned them into transition points. Khimki’s overall image remained problematic, though. On offense, the visitors mostly relied on individual outbreaks from some of their players: their teamwork and ball circulation were not at the highest level. In the final minutes, the super-talented forward who answers to the name Quincy Miller spoke once again. Despite the fact that his enthusiasm sometimes leads him to hasty decisions, in the crucial final minutes he was decisive on both ends of the court. His good creation in the isolation game, good execution following pick-and-rolls and formidable over-the-rim play pushed his team to victory. His follow-up dunk and subsequent block on Marko Todorovic in the game’s last minute finally tipped the scales in favor of the Serbian team. After these two home wins, Zvezda practically holds qualification to the Top 16 in the palm of its hand.
Anadolu Efes bounces back
As it turned out, Anadolu Efes Istanbul was 10 minutes away from advancing or from having to face a two-game survival test in order to move on to the Top 16. With head coach Dusan Ivkovic’s team down 10 points to host Cedevita Zagreb after three quarters, the scenario seemed like a nightmare for Efes. But the solutions came on defense and in the end the visitors escaped Zagreb with an 81-75 win. Yet again, Efes was inconsistent on defense. Efes was impressive in the first and last quarters, closing passing lanes after pick-and-rolls aimed at Miro Bilan or putting him under pressure even if the passes did reach the their target. Efes’s defensive transition in those two quarters was excellent as its rotations covered up the gaps and blocked the diagonal passes. As such, in the first and fourth quarters Efes conceded just 23 points total. In the second and third, however, things were exactly the opposite. Jacob Pullen reached the basket easily or took shots from the perimeter without defenders even putting their hands up to block his view. The passes reached Bilan easily, whether following a pick-and-roll or straight into the post, after which he scored with no particular pressure. Efes’s transition defense was quite bad and passes to the wings resulted in open shots for Fran Pilepic, who did some serious damage with 12 points on 4-for-4 three-point shooting.
On offense, Efes’s main course of action was screens on the ball from power forwards Derrick Brown and Dario Saric. Both can threaten in many ways following a screen and that’s exactly what they did. They scored with perimeter and mid-range shots, but more often they drove all the way to the basket and finished there. That duo scored 28 points and collected 16 rebounds: if they had been slightly more accurate, they could have contributed even more in offense. There were periods of the game when they both played together at the “four” and “five” positions in order to score more, but also to provide greater flexibility in the team’s switching defenses. Jayson Granger and Thomas Heurtel did some excellent work on creating and reading plays, sharing between them 15 of the team’s 20 assists. The difference in the end was Saric and Birkan Batuk hitting big three-pointers. With this win, Efes secured their qualification to the Top 16, with improvement and consistency being essential for the rest of their tournament.