The Playoffs are over, long live the Playoffs! It's just an impression, but I'm very tempted to say that these 17 games were, overall, the best experience I witnessed in more than 30 years of being a fan of European club basketball. Yes, there was only one Game 5, but it was as much gamefivish as possible. By gamefivish I mean tense, physical, close, emotional and very susceptible to change for small details. Real Madrid vs. Power Electronics was just such a battle royal. If it was American football, you'd call that a defensive struggle, and defenses were a big key in the low-scoring affair. They were almost as big as the importance of the outcome, which contributed to get those rings a little smaller and those shooters a little more off-target than usual. But when intensity is so high, you must be able to go beyond the score and the percentages. It's a testament to Real Madrid's determination that they were able to win shooting 35% and making only 4 of their first 15 shots. And it speaks volumes about Valencia's resiliency that they were still in the game with a minute to go despite scoring just 16 points in the second half (after notching a 25-point second quarter).

Speaking of tough stretches, Real Madrid started the game allowing an 11-2 run to their opponents. Propelled by Oman Cook's passes and Dusko Savanovic's 9 big points, Valencia was more aggressive and Madrid, which had more turnovers (5) than field goals (3) in the first quarter, had a great deal of problems converting close shots. Also, Madrid's structure (two small guards in Pablo Prigioni and Sergio Llull, two tall bigs in Ante Tomic and Felipe Reyes) needed some defensive fine tuning. After a brief comeback, following a timeout,... more

No, there was no way to predict correctly this beautiful craziness. Unless you're a wizard, after the first game of the Playoffs, you did not know that only one Spanish team would have made it to the Final Four in Barcelona, that only one team from Athens would have survived (and that it would NOT have been the one winning Game 1 with a 48-point margin!) and that three teams who lost their openers would have gone on to win three games in a row each! It's a little cruel when you end up with nothing nine days after dreaming of Barcelona, but it's also the reason why this thing is just great. I saw Maccabi in Game 3, and admired the intensity they put into the game even after Doron Perkins went down, injured. In Game 4 it looked like they were a team of destiny, one not to be denied. (Coincidentally, I had the same impression also when Shaun Stonerook opened Game 4 for Montepaschi Siena with a couple of deep threes and Zoran Erceg of Olympiacos scored in his own basket). I only saw highlights of Maccabi-Caja Laboral in Game 4, but I definitely saw enough of Guy Pnini, in a brilliant performance to replace Perkins, and Jeremy Pargo, a Euroleague rookie, to know this: head coach David Blatt's season is already great success, in terms of the team much better now than when he took it over. Caja Laboral had a tough break in Game 2, played a great season but in the end, as we know, only one team can advance, and by playing best-of-five series, the winner is always the better team. As far as the other series ….

Real Madrid 2-2 Power Electronics Valencia

In Game 3, Real Madrid performed at its best when it counted most, in the fourth quarter. Entering the final stanza with a... more

Seriously, if you have knowledge of something more exciting, compelling, dramatic and exhilirating than a Turkish Airlines Euroleague playoffs night, please let me know, I'm really interested. A notice: this blog might suffer from the exhaustion I'm feeling after all the emotions Games 1 and 2 provided us with. A second notice: I just saw highlights of the Real Madrid-Valencia series, so next week I'll start with them. When ALL playoffs series are tied at 1-1 after two games, when 48 hours are enough to cause a 65-point swing, when a grand total of 12 points decide three of the four Game 2s, there's only one thing you can say: Devotion!!!!!!!

Caja Laboral vs Maccabi Electra

One recurring theme is how resilient these eight teams are. Maccabi was proof of that, by coming back from a significant second-quarter deficit in Game 2. Being already down 1-0 in the series thanks to a great shooting night in Game 1 by Caja Laboral, the Israelis were able to stay in Game 2 despite another stellar shooting night by their counterparts. In 80 minutes over two games, Caja Laboral made 23 of its 46 three-point tries, while Maccabi converted only 7 of 29 from long-range. But there is more than one way to skin a cat, and Maccabi coach David Blatt's guys were good enough to find their way, despite adding to free throw woes (7 of 16 vs. 19 of 22 for Caja Laboral) to its long-distance blues. The hero was obviously Jeremy Pargo, who made a tough pull-up with 1.3 seconds on the clock and the score deadlocked at 81. But sometimes, games that are decided down the stretch go through important junctures way before that. This was the case when Schortsianidis – aka Big Sofo – scored Maccabi's first 7 points of... more

We had a couple of "play-ins" to reach the playoffs on a great Thursday in the Turkish Airlines Euroleague, with the winners taking it all but the losers going out in style, though definitely unhappy.

The first decisive game took place in Valencia, where 40 minutes sealed two very improbable fates. On November 17, 2010, after a loss in Ljubljana, Power Electronics Valencia stood at 1-4 and in last place of its group, fresh off a coaching change and with no apparent future in the competition. On February 2, 2011, after a victory against visiting Zalgiris, Fenerbahce Ulker stood at the top of its Top 16 group at 3-0, having started the round winning by 14 in Athens vs. Olympiacos before holding serve at home two times.

Fast forward to Thursday, to better gauge the psychological subtext of the game at Pabellon Fuente de San Luis. One team, Valencia, was super-excited to be there after having already beaten the odds to make it to the Top 16. The other one, Fenerbahce Ulker, was still reminiscing a bit about its overtime loss in Kaunas and a third-quarter blackout at home in Istanbul vs. Olympiacos. The former, happy to have the chance of a lifetime. The latter, a little shocked to be forced to play with its back against the wall.

Obviously, the stuff you read above is a little dramatized. But I think that between playing only to win and a little bit not to lose there's a big difference. It's entirely possible that I may be reading too much into a game that is always determined by whoever plays better basketball. But seeing Valencia's players wildly pressuring the ball right after a score, watching Omar Cook eradicating the ball two times from the hands of Sarunas Jasikevicius, the best... more