By Panos Katsiroumpas/ info@eurohoops.net
The Magnifying Glass for Week 2 takes you to Piraeus, Tel Aviv, and Barcelona to give you the key points that decided the big games.
- Instant offense! This – to a large extent – is the reason for Olympiacos’s commanding victory. Great defenses, tremendous pressure, and transitions after successful defenses. More than half of the home team’s points were scored in the first 14 seconds of possessions.
- Without defense: Efes’s defense was very poor, it didn’t shut off the central lane for Vassilis Spanoulis, who went on a spree. They had slow reactions and turns in set plays, while they got exposed in transition as well.
- Pressure and Milutinov: Olympiacos’s defense was crushing. The backcourt players broke up the screens, everyone responded in the mismatches, and for the first time we saw Milutinov not going to the hedge outs but staying inside and making every execution difficult. The mere 11 assists and the many neutralized shots demonstrate this defensive effectiveness.
- Cedi! If Perasovic’s team can take something away, that’s the super performance of Osman, who was fighting on his own and had 22 points, 6 rebounds, and a lot of energy.
Maccabi Tel Aviv – Real Madrid
- The work that screens do! Real made the most out of the good off ball screens (and the very poor manner they were dealt with by Maccabi). It was one of the main reasons for the win. Carroll and Rudy, who were on the receiving end of these screens, had 9-for-15 in three-point shooting.
- Play small ball or not? At the end of the third quarter and for a big part of the fourth, we saw the ultimate small ball by Maccabi. Goudelock, Rudd, Seeley, or Weems, Pnini, and Landesberg were on the court at the same time. Five players that play from the ‘1’ position to the ‘3’, without a clear creator. At first, the line-up confused Real’s defense, with Reyes and Randolph not being able to mark along the perimeter. Maccabi tied the game but Real started getting the ball in the paint. Randolph scored 5 points in a row, Maccabi stuck with the same line-up and saw the difference go back to 11. In the end, these kinds of line-ups can thrive only for a few minutes.
- A 16-0 run by Maccabi at the start of the 3rd quarter: Within that time, Real did everything wrong and gave the home team room and time to play their favorite game. Running and immediate executions by Rudd and Weems turned the game around. So what if he had 0-for-8 in three-point shooting? Sergio Llull had 14 points, 11 assists, and great defenses on Maccabi’s greatest offensive weapons. He’s without a doubt the Queen’s leader.
Barcelona – Fenerbahce
In a game that was decided in the details, Fenerbahce’s 8-for-13 three-pointers in the first half made the difference. The Turks finished the game with 52% from behind the three-point line, when their opponents had 37%.
- They’re going to live and die by Rice! This year Barcelona are going to live and die according to the appetites of Tyrese Rice. Especially now that they’re playing without Navarro and Koponen. He helped tremendously in his team’s return by scoring and creating, but a missed three-pointer in transition and the bad decision in the last play make him fateful.
- Fire! With the score at 72-73 and a minute to go before the end we saw some very bad last attacks. Dixon and Rice didn’t exchange one pass, got tangled in the switches, and in the end both of them didn’t amount to much. Surely their coaches are not satisfied at all.
- And yet, on the bench…. Despite the fact that Ante Tomic had scored 12 points and had collected 8 rebounds, he didn’t set foot on the court at all in the last 12 minutes of the game, and this raised some questions. Apparently coach Bartzokas preferred to tighten up his defense rather than have another pole in his team’s offense.