View from the bench: Top 16, Week 1

June 18, 2013

World-renowned as a master teacher of basketball, Aito Garcia Reneses holds a place as one of the most prestigious coaches in Europe. He won a silver medal at the 2008 Olympics to go with a ULEB Cup, two Korac Cups, nine Spanish Leagues and five Spanish Cup titles, just to name a few of his accomplishments in almost four decades on the benches of basketball powers like F.C. Barcelona, Joventut Badalona and Unicaja. Aito, as everyone in European basketball knows him, is also a regular contributor to the Mastermind Coaching Seminars of the Euroleague Basketball Institute. He joins Euroleague.net to give his coach's point of view and analysis on Turkish Airlines Euroleague games.

CSKA head coach Jonas Kazlauskas had the same position at Olympiacos for a couple years. Likewise, the current Olympiacos coach, Dusan Ivkovic, was also at CSKA Moscow before. Both had coached each other's players, too, before their teams opened the Top 16 against one another on Wednesday. As a matter of fact, Vassilis Spanoulis and Milos Teodosic were teammates last season in the Greek team.

All that mutual knowledge surely played a role in producing such a controlled game. Furthermore, Ivkovic probably thought that his team's chances to win would be bigger if they planned a less dramatic style of game. The absence of center Lazaros Papadopoulos for the Reds was covered, not in a regular manner, by other players. Kyle Hines stood out among those players who took turns playing center.

In Clip 1, we can see him scoring thanks to Martynas Gecevicius's pass in a continuation to the basket, avoiding with his physical power the block attempt by Andrei Kirilenko. That same physical power is what allows Hines, as we can see in Clip 2, to recover from helping on Teodosic's penetration to block Nenad Krstic (who is 14 centimeters taller than Hines, at that).

In Clip 3, Hines scores from midrange, something that, if he managed to do it regularly, would up his value as a player. At just 1.98 meters tall, it's very difficult to hit your max as a player if you only score around the basket.

From the beginning of the season until now, I have witnessed a big improvement in how Olympiacos organizes its game, with more defined roles in which Spanoulis, of course, has complete freedom. Gecevicius plays easy, not forcing it, taking advantage of his skills. Pero Antic shows his character only sometimes in isolated actions. It's true, however, that this discipline can lead them to pass the ball too many times, as we can see in Clip 4, where they run out the 24-second clock. This happened when the Reds were still leading on the scoreboard at the start of the third quarter.

If the organization has been good for the Reds, I can only say the same for CSKA. What's more, overall, they have a superior average skill level in the roster, and even more so if we look at their bench players. The Russian team didn't need to play a brilliant game in order to win clearly. Starting in the third quarter, they dominated the game with relative ease.

Sometimes, when Teodosic was pressed full-court, he gave up the ball and his team made the ball move through passes. But on this occasion, in Clip 5, he dribbles against the Greek pressure and when he reaches the arc he is screened for by Andrey Vorontsevich, who then rolls to the basket. When this happens, Teodosic sees Antic fall down on a screen by Nenad Krstic. Then, Richard Dorsey is left alone to defend both big men, Krstic and Vorontsevich. Teodosic reads the pass perfectly and makes it - as if he wasn't even trying - around his back to Krstic underneath the rim.

Kazlauskas's team played easy basketball, based on the quality, height and wingspan of his players. Take a look in Clip 6 at how easy this Andrei Kirilenko back-door play looks. To do that however, you need great shooters like Teodosic and Ramunas Siskauskas, whom the defense cannot sag away from, you need someone like Viktor Khryapa, who knows how to pass the ball, and you need a Kirilenko, who reads when is the right moment, using his size, his mobility and his wingspan.

In Clip 7 we can see, again, Khryapa reading Hines's body check on defense and giving a great pass under the rim to Sasha Kaun, who had set a perfect screen for Kirilenko.

Summarizing, a game without punch but with many quality plays. Some of them easy, like the one in our last clip (8), which looks easy but which few are able to perform as Siskauskas does. In this case, he gets a little out of bounds (which is not permitted) and then uses a screen from Kaun. Once he gets the ball, he gets the attention not only of his defender, Spanoulis, but also of Dorsey, the defender of the big man. After that, he starts dribbling and moves a little backwards in reaction to the defensive fake, but then goes to the basket. When the defenders sag to prevent a pass to Kaun is when Siskauskas finds space and scores.

POSTED BY

Aito Garcia Reneses - Barcelona, Spain

DATE:

Friday, January 20, 2012