By Panos Katsiroumpas/ info@eurohoops.net
Very important game for both teams in the run for the home court advantage took place in the Palau between Barcelona and Maccabi. The Catalan side took an easy win and overcome the point differential of their loss in Tel Aviv.
In the biggest parts of the game we saw up tempo basketball for both teams, which were looking to take advantage of transition opportunities and score easy baskets in unbalanced defense. Barcelona was more effective in this aspect, when at that time Maccabi was mostly hurrying up than trying to score in transition, resulting to many easy mistakes.
In set basketball Barcelona used Ante Tomic as the go to guy in almost every possession. He was involved in all pick n roll plays, taking the ball after the screen in mid-range with 2 options. The 1st was to try to attack to the basket and the 2nd to pass the ball either in the perimeter for an open shot, or in the cuts, for his teammates from the weak side on the double team. The Croatian center played perfectly the role of the step creator in his team, being the assists leader with 6. He was the real dominator in both ends. He had a double-double in points and rebounds without missing a shot and finished the game with Ranking of 35 points.
Barca took advantage of almost any miss match situation in the switching defense of Maccabi, scoring many easy baskets after the slow rotations and the double teams that were absent in the majority of the plays. In total the reactions of the Israeli defense were too slow.
Goodes tried to change the rhythm using small ball lineups in the court with both Sofoklis and Tyus on the bench and Alexander playing in the center position. With this lineup they tried to become more flexible and quick in order to put more pressure but this tactical option stopped only very few plays.
Barca was moving the ball very well and they had also good movement from all the players without the ball. They set effective screens for their shooters, they opened the distances in order to be ready for the passes from inside creations coming mostly from Tomic and Satoransky, and Thomas played excellent the role of the weak side executor with shots and penetrations from the baseline.
The defending champs didn’t put a lot of pressure also with their poor offensive game. Their only real plan was to put the ball inside for Schortsanitis when he was present in the court. They opened their distances for the Greek Center to create spaces for isolation plays and all his teammates waited for his passes in the perimeter.
Sofo played well in the first 10-15 minutes where Barcelona preferred to use single cover on him. After the beginning of 2nd period they started to give help from the weak side mostly with Doellman helping and Thomas closing the gap in the weak side. Schortsanitis committed some mistakes and lost his rhythm.
After the effective defensive plan on Sofoklis the only real problem that Barca faced was the outside shooting of Alexander who gave more in offense than in the defensive end. He was executing well either as power forward, either as a center in shorter lineups. In the end Maccabi didn’t found other ways to put real threats against the Catalan defense. It was just the usual game with the isolations of the guards and the penetrations and also the mid-range shooting of Smith, who never found good offensive rhythm. In total this was an easy and fair win for Barcelona.