Veteran sportswriter and Euroleague.net collaborator Vladimir Stankovic has been following the best basketball on the continent longer than almost anyone journalist, writing for decades about the sport in major publications in both Serbia and Spain. For the new 2009-10 season, he offers a series of opinion blogs about what's happening on and off the court in the Euroleague.

The 2010 Final Four, as the culmination of a great Euroleague season, confirmed several predictions. For instance:

- Regal FC Barcelona was the best team.
- Olympiacos has more the best players than the best team.
- CSKA Moscow is still way up there despite the budget cuts.
- Partizan Belgrade more than justified its place at the Final Four.

Each of the four teams can draw positive conclusions, too:

- Barca has shown quality, maturity and an ability to withstand pressure.
- Olympiacos improved its final standing as compared to Berlin 2009, where it finished fourth, and now hopes that a third consecutive Final Four qualification, if it happens next season, will be the charm.
- CSKA, with a Russian coach (Evgeniy Pashutin) and several local players (Viktor Khryapa, Sasha Kaun, Andrey Vorontsevich) showed that it doesn't depend solely on foreign stars.
- Partizan has demonstrated plenty, even losing twice in overtime, because it achieved something rare: getting talked about more in defeat than its opponents were in victory.

Starting from here, each will have homework for next season:

- Barcelona will face the fact that it is more difficult to defend a title than to win one.
- The Reds will face doubts about the future of such... more

Veteran sportswriter and Euroleague.net collaborator Vladimir Stankovic has been following the best basketball on the continent longer than almost anyone journalist, writing for decades about the sport in major publications in both Serbia and Spain. For the new 2009-10 season, he offers a series of opinion blogs about what's happening on and off the court in the Euroleague.

Four series finished 3-1, putting three favorites and an outsider at the 2010 Final Four in Paris from May 7 to 9. It was one emotional finish to the Playoffs, even without any fifth games to give it more drama. Barcelona, CSKA and Olympiacos met expectations. Partizan surprised Maccabi, but any team that over the course of a season is capable of beating Panathinaikos, Barcelona, Olympiacos, Unicaja and Efes Pilsen can't be called a surprise anymore, can it?

The Playoffs have demonstrated once again what it means to "play the best in the most opportunistic moment". Once before in this space I have cited an ironic saying about statistics being "the correct sum of mistaken facts", but nonetheless basketball is easier to understand looking at the numbers...

• For example, Partizan improved its average performance index rating as a team from 74 during the regular season and Top 16 to 85 in its four games against Maccabi. Partizan's scoring averaged rose from 72 to 80 in the playoffs, its three-point accuracy from 34% to 41%, while maintaining its league-best rebounding average of 37 per game.
• Olympiacos saw its scoring average lowered from 87 to 84 and its performance index rating drop from 100 to 92, but in both categories is still better than the other three Final Four...

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Vladimir Stankovic, Euroleague.net

Veteran sportswriter and Euroleague.net collaborator Vladimir Stankovic has been following the best basketball on the continent longer than almost anyone journalist, writing for decades about the sport in major publications in both Serbia and Spain. For the new 2009-10 season, he offers a series of opinion blogs about what's happening on and off the court in the Euroleague.

In basketball, as in many other sports, there's the general opinion that when a player jumps from a small club to a bigger one, or when he changes levels of competition to a higher one, he will have to go through a period of adaptation and learning, even more so if the player is young. In many recent cases, the newly signed player goes to a club's "B" team or even is loaded to another club in order to gain minutes and experience. And then, there's Ante Tomic. The young Real Madrid center, and hero of Game 2 against Regal FC Barcelona, who shatters this theory even though some will claim that he's the exception who proves the rule. The biggest merit, however, goes to the... more

Vladimir Stankovic, Euroleague.net

Veteran sportswriter and Euroleague.net collaborator Vladimir Stankovic has been following the best basketball on the continent longer than almost anyone journalist, writing for decades about the sport in major publications in both Serbia and Spain. For the new 2009-10 season, he offers a series of opinion blogs about what's happening on and off the court in the Euroleague.

Well, as it should be in any well-planned and organized competition, we are facing the most thrilling weeks of the Euroleague's 10th season. Yes, we will still have an even more spectacular weekend ahead, during the 2010 Final Four in Paris, but there will be plenty of time later to talk about the season finale. With the start of the Playoffs, however, we delve into these series of five games. I am not going to analyze all the matchups (a job that has already been done, and very well at that, by Euroleague.net) or the possibilities of one team or another making the Final Four. I'd just like to give my opinion on each of the eight quarterfinalists.
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