Opportunity knocked, they answered

May 25, 2012

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 teams. The Reds maintained their rebounding average at 33 and also matched its three-point accuracy, 37%.
CSKA's index rating rose slightly from 86 to 87, as did its total rebounds, from 31 to 32 per game, although its three-point shooting fell som, from 41.5% to 38.2%.
Barcelona, meanwhile, saw its index rating average tumble from 96 to 82, it scoring from 79 to 74 points and its three-point accuracy from 35.5% to 33% - although its defense forced Real Madrid into worse numbers.

In the end, the results have a single explanation: the teams that won played better at the right moment!

Echoes of Berlin

The Final Four in Paris will reunite for the second time this decade three teams that also played the previous Final Four. Barcelona, CSKA and Olympiacos are repeat participants from Berlin 2009, while Partizan makes its first Final For of the decade. In the middle of the decade, CSKA, Maccabi and Tau Ceramica played consecutive Final Fours together, at Moscow in 2005 and at Prague in 2006.

Another curiosity: Barcelona and CSKA will repeat their semifinals duel of a year ago in Berlin. CSKA won that time by 4 points, 82-78. In the case of Partizan and Olympiacos, they will break their tie from the regular season, when each won at home. Partizan beat the Reds in Belgrade by 86-80 while Olympiacos was better in Piraeus, winning 81-60 in a game that lacked importance because both teams had already qualified for the Top 16.

For CSKA, it's the final eight!

What an incredible streak by CSKA! Paris will be the club's eighth Final Four in a row. Starting with Barcelona in 2003, they have always made it: three times with Dusan Ivkovic on the bench, four times with Ettore Messina and now with Evgeniy Pashutin in his first season. Those appearances include two titles (2006 and 2008) and two more finals played (2007 and 2009) in the last four years: in other words, always a major role. CSKA is a permanent credit to the Euroleague, the team with the best overall numbers...

On the other hand...Real Madrid did not make a Final Four for the entire decade!

Altogether, 12 teams have filled up the nine Final Fours played in the Euroleague this decade: CSKA (8), Maccabi (5), Panathinaikos (4), Barcelona (4), Tau Ceramica/Caja Laboral (4), Montepaschi Siena (3), Olympiacos (2), Benetton Treviso (2), Fortitudo Bologna (1), Kinder Bologna (1), Partizan (1) and Unicaja (1).

More curiosities

The four qualifiers have won at least one European title: Partizan 1992, Olympiacos 1997 and Barcelona 2003. CSKA, six times: 1961,1963,1969,1971, 2006 and 2008.
Partizan participated in the first Final Four in 1988 in Ghent, Belgium.
Current head coach Dusko Vujosevic was Partizan's coach in Ghent, too, when he was 31 years old.
On of the other teams in Ghent that year, Aris of Greece, played current Olympiacos head coach Panagiotis Giannakis.
Giannakis was also Euroleague champion as a player with Panathinaikos in 1996 - in Paris!
CSKA has played two Final Fours in Pairs - the Euroleague in 1996 and the SuproLeague in 2001 - losing both times.
Barcelona lost two title games at Final Fours in Paris: in 1991 against Split and 1996 against Panathinaikos.
Predrag Danilovic, the president of Partizan, has twice been Euroleague champion, with Partizan in 1992 in Istanbul and with Kinder Bologna in 1998 in Barcelona.
Barcelona and CSKA have played semifinals against each other at three Final Fours: in 2003, Barcelona won at home, 76-71; in 2006, CSKA won in Prague, 84-75, the same as it did last year in Berlin, by 82-84.
Partizan is the only qualifier that has never played in the Final Four venue, Palais Omnisports Paris-Bercy. Barcelona and CSKA did so in the 1996 Final Four, while Olympiacos played there in the 1997 McDonald's Championships.
Dusan Kecman of Partizan is the only player left to "defend" last year's title, which he won with Panathinaikos.
J.R. Holden will play in his eighth consecutive Final Four, all with CSKA, while his former teammate Theo Papaloukas matches him with six for CSKA and two for Olympiacos.

The numbers

Due to the 3-1 series results of both Barcelona and CSKA, Gianluca Basile of the former and Holden of the latter will end this season - assuming both play both games in Paris - with 199 Euroleague games for the decade...the round number of 200 will have to wait for next season!

Basile needs 23 points to become the seventh since the year 2000 to score 2,000 or more points...Jaka Lakovic committed his 800th foul in the last playoff game... Of the eight players who have played the most minutes since 2000 in the Euroleague, seven will be in Paris: Holden (6,181 minutes), Basile (5,313), Jaka Lakovic (4,767), Trajan Langdon (4,696), Nikola Vujcic (4,681), Juan Carlos Navarro (4,556) and Theo Papaloukas (4,260). The only one not among them in Paris will be Marcus Brown, who ranks second (5,418).

POSTED BY

Vladimir Stankovic - Barcelona, Spain

DATE:

Tuesday, April 06, 2010