Plenty left to decide!

May 25, 2012

For a unique perspective on the most exciting months of the season, Euroleague.net brings you media blogger Flavio Tranquillo, a ranking expert on world basketball at its finest. Flavio has long been known as the voice of basketball in his native Italy- and for good reason. But in addition to communicating his expertise as an announcer, Flavio has the background of a coach, the curiosity of a journalist, and most importantly, the devotion of a basketball lover!

And then there were...six! Two more teams to qualify, four still trying, while 14 have been eliminated since the start of the regular season. Raise your hand if back in October you correctly predicted that Fenerbahce Ulker would have not made the Top 16 and that Panathinaikos would have been the first team ousted from the Top 16, joined the following week by Efes Pilsen, Montepaschi and Unicaja - while Prokom and either Maroussi or Partizan advance. Please, I want you to play lotto on my behalf week-in and week-out …

Still to be decided are the winners of the Maroussi-Partizan and Khimki-Caja Laboral battles. The Group E rivals, Maroussi and Partizan, play both on the road, @Panathinaikos and @Regal Barcelona, respectively. Coach Vujosevic's Partizan team has won one more game but has a minus-5 differential in the head-to-head matchup with Maroussi. Last week, both teams were beaten soundly by the two prohibitive favourites in the group. I think Panathinaikos in Belgrade showed the power of a clear mind. Once eliminated from playoff contention, the former defensive champions forgot the shooting blues and made 11 of 19 threes en route to a 16-point win. The basketball becomes so light when you don't have anything to lose or gain …. Witnessing the game through Euroleague TV (by the way: isn't it great to catch all those games at once?) I was very impressed by the fans in Pionir. To hear that incessant chanting, to see the fans support the team after the horn sounded like they had won by 16, well, that is Devotion! No other way to phrase it. Maroussi went down hard vs. Barcelona, scoring just 3 points in the third quarter against a team that had 11 scorers (the 12th was Victor Sada, a very important piece of the blau-grana machine, who was on the court more than 11 minutes). Against Partizan on Thursday, Barcelona will play for home-court advantage in the next round while trying to avenge its only Euroleague loss of the season. Panathinaikos will only play for pride vs. Maroussi, but that "only" needs to be put in context. I really think we should not dwell on teams having different motivations at this stage of the competition. First, the Greens already proved it a moot point by winning in Belgrade and playing very hard. And above all, teams know that tomorrow they might be the ones depending on someone else with little or no motivation playing hard. That's why if I was Partizan I would not be worried about a situation they don't have any control over. Even if, obviously, Maroussi will play for its life, and that is something that cannot be duplicated easily by the Greens.

Proof of the above-mentioned considerations is Cibona dismantling Khimki last week and Olympiacos keeping the Russian team perfectly alive by beating Caja Laboral. Caja Laboral is now -18 in total point differential, Khimki is -24. Both teams beat each other by 11 on the road in the head-to-head matches, while both play at home this week. The Spanish team will face Cibona in a game that will renew the acquaintances between Marcelinho Huertas, point guard of the hosts, and Jamont Gordon, point guard of the guests, who were teammates in Bologna last season in Fortitudo. Gordon might very well be the hottest player in the Euroleague and will definitely try to go out on a high note after turning a lot of heads in this Top 16, with his 21.4 points per game and his 24.2 average index rating. And Cibona came oh-so-close to beating Olympiacos in Week 4, so don't expect these two games to be taken for granted by any of the four teams involved. Khimki will try to win in Athens vs. the only unbeaten team in the Top 16. Olimpiacos last lost a Euroleague game in Belgrade on Nov. 26 and currently rides a 10-game winning streak. I'm curious to see what Khimki center Robertas Javtokas, who knows the Olympiacos challenge from his Panathinaikos days, will do. The Lithuanian center has upped his production in the Top 16, gaining almost 23 percentage points on his two-point shooting (which currently stands at a very remarkable 26/35, more than 74%). That 74% would be a very decent clip for free throws, and even more so in the case of Javtokas, whose already so-so FT shooting has gone way down in the Top 16. The 52% shooter of the regular season has clanged 15 of his 22 attempts, making only 31.8%, in the Top 16. Expect him to get fouled a lot on Thursday...

Couple more words. I'll be very interested in watching this week's Real Madrid-Maccabi game. This Group F battle took a heavy toll on the teams in terms of physical and mental energies. Now that we know who is in and who is out, I'm ready to enjoy another chapter of the Messina-Gershon rivalry (remember Prague, circa 2006) with first place on the table. Different styles, different approaches and a little less pressure should make for a beauty, even if obviously you want to get first place in the group at all costs. Maccabi registered the highest-ever scoring quarter vs. Montepaschi with 43 points in the fourth last week. That had something to do with a lot of factors, from Alan Anderson being such a good player (15 points in the quarter and an assist off the dribble that you should definitely watch if you already didn't) to Siena crashing after realizing that their playoff dreams were over (they still went down with a lot of dignity and resolve, I think). In terms of talent in the offensive halfcourt, Maccabi is a terrific team, really cream of the crop. The same can't necessarily be said about Real Madrid, a team that I would call respectable in this regard. But Messina's troops are more consistent and play under a whole lot more control than the Israelis. And historically, the further you go into the competition, the more important this gets in terms of relevance to win tough games. That reminds me of CSKA, who quietly sealed first place in Group G last week with a road win over Unicaja. Messina is not there anymore, but don't forget that the system and the players are. I don't see any reason not to include CSKA among the elite teams that can conceivably think to play for all the marbles in Paris two months from now…

POSTED BY

FLAVIO TRANQUILLO - ITALY

DATE:

Monday, March 08, 2010