Voices

The Obradovic secrets

Mon, 16 May 2011 00:00:00 GMT

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 2010-11 season, he offers a blog that honors the history of European basketball - even while history keeps being made!

My entry this week is not a historic tale per se, but the man I will take about is historic alright. His name is Zelimir "Zeljko" Obradovic. He became a Euroleague champion for a record eighth time in his 19-year coaching career last week, after winning the 2011 Turkish Airlines Euroleague Final Four in Barcelona with clear superiority over Montepaschi Siena, in the semifinals, and Maccabi Electra, in the title game. Aside from his eight European crowns with four different teams, Obradovic has also won two Saporta Cups, which was the second-highest European competition some years ago. First, he won it with Real Madrid in 1997 against Mash Verona by 78-64 with a team featuring Dejan Bodiroga, Alberto Herreros and Joe Arlauckas just to name a few. In 1999, he won it again with Benetton Treviso against Pamesa Valencia by 64-60. The Benetton team featured Riccardo Pittis, Marcelo Nicola, Denis Marconato and Zeljko Rebraca among others. If European basketball awarded rings for the titles, Obradovic would have run out of fingers by now!

I admit that today's entry is a difficult challenge because almost everything is already known about Obradovic. I have known him for more than 30 years since his start as a player and, of course, as a coach. I have witnessed live nine out of his ten triumphs in Europe but despite all that, I cannot say that I know all his secrets, all the magic that surrounds him and that has turned him into the winningest coach in European ball, above legends like Aleksandar Gomelskiy, Pedro Ferrandiz and Aleksandar Nikolic.

Junior World championships of 1979

The name of Zeljko Obradovic appeared for the international audience for the first time in August, 1979. He was 19 years old and he had already been playing two seasons for the first team of Borac in his native Cacak, a town in the middle of Serbia about 150 kilometers Southwest of Belgrade. He entered, as point guard, a very good Yugoslav national team with Zoran Cutura, Goran Grbovic, Zoran Radovic, Emir Mutapcic, Milenko Savovic, Zarko Djurisic and Sabahudin Bilalovic. Yugoslavia finished fourth, as the best European team, after the USA, Brazil and Argentina. During the fall of the 1979-80 season, his Borac team, coached by the famous Professor Aleksandar Nikolic, played the Korac Cup. During the period between 1978 and 1980, the first connection between the famous coach and his future pupil took place. But before Professor Nikolic, two other men were key in the life of Zeljko Obradovic. Their names were Radmilo Misovic and Dragan Kicanovic, two great players from Cacak. Many things are known about the latter, he was a natural-born champion, a genius with a winning character like Obradovic, but Misovic is a legend only for the people of Cacak and those who remember the Yugoslav League of the late sixties and early seventies. Misovic was a great shooter, a scoring machine, and he was the best scorer of the then-strong Yugoslav League. But because of his mentality and way of living, when having to decide between his friends and fishing in the Morava River or the glory and the money of playing for Partizan or Crvena Zvezda, he chose the former. In the 1971-72 season, Borac had signed Kicanovic, a young super-talent formed in Zeleznicar, the other club...

The waiting game

Thu, 05 May 2011 00:00:00 GMT

The only European to ever win both the Euroleague and NCAA titles, Jiri "George" Zidek has been a collaborator with Euroleague.net and Euroleague.TV since the 2006 Final Four in his native Czech Republic. Big George, who won the Euroleague with Zalgiris Kaunas in 1999, continues as a color analyst of Euroleague games for Czech TV, not to mention for Euroleague.TV, where he has worked the last three Final Fours. In this blog, he offers analysis from an ex-champ's point of view on what games and players are impressing him most!

Yes, those would be the right words for what's happening in all of our minds – be it players, coaches, managements, fans or media. I feel sure that all of us are counting down seconds for the games to start. After a great regular season and Top 16 we witnessed equally captivating playoffs that kept most of us glued to our Euroleague.TV accounts. Three teams managed to turn the tables and snatch away home court advantage from better-seeded clubs to earn their right to travel to Barcelona. It was a season of surprises, with many teams feeling their chance to lift the trophy; a season in which devotion feels to be the fitting motto for the battles that we have witnessed on the courts. The waiting game is approaching its end, so the final chapter can be played out this weekend in Barcelona with the crowning of a new champion on Sunday. Going back to Prague in 2006, when I first got the chance to work as analyst for Euroleague.net, Final Fours have featured superb basketball, the true cherry on the Euroleague cake. There is no reason to expect anything less this season!

Panathinaikos vs. Montepaschi Siena

Previewing the first semifinal, I must go back to the playoffs, because both teams surprised me. Panathinaikos dethroned a defending champion that had enjoyed until then another stellar season by manifesting along the way all their talent. Siena rose from the ashes after the worst defeat in playoff history in Game 1 of its series vs. Olympiacos, when the Reds looked beyond any doubt to be firmly in command. Both teams based their success on efficient and stifling defenses so a defensive physical battle is to be expected.

When I think of Panathinaikos, these qualities come to mind: discipline, execution and toughness. Zeljko Obradovic, the most experienced coach at the Final Four, always devises a strict game plan and uses every bit of each of his player's talent to get under the skin of his opponents. His players have been able to keep their focus and execute both on offense and defense. Obradovic works the sidelines from the tipoff, pushes his players to the limit and, most importantly, makes sure that any and all individual ambitions are left in the locker room.

Offensively, Panathinaikos is a textbook pick-and-roll team that uses this ever-repeating aspect of the game to set up either easy shots under the basket or wide open three-pointers for their shooters. An ability to space the court perfectly together with the unselfishness of its players makes it very difficult for opponents to defend Panathinaikos. Even when other teams use zone defenses, Panathinaikos sticks to the pick-and-roll throughout the game. Despite Panathinaikos being as unselfish as they get, the play of Dimitris Diamantidis during the season makes him a hot favorite in my MVP voting. Not only does Diamantidis exhibit great patience and an ability to set the tempo on offense, he also sets the tone on defense as well, with his long arns, strength and tireless work ethic. Needless to say, Diamantidis has been there for Panathinaikos when crucial baskets are needed to be made. Defensively, all the Panathinaikos players are expected to test...

A home of first-time champions

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMT

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 2010-11 season, he offers a blog that honors the history of European basketball - even while history keeps being made!

Barcelona's Palau Sant Jordi, built for the 1992 Olympic Games, this week hosts the Euroleague Final Four for the third time. The previous two will always remain in the memories of Kinder Bologna, F.C. Barcelona and their fans because Palau Sant Jordi is where both teams won their first titles in Europe’s premier competition.

The 1997-98 Euroleague season consisted of 24 teams from 12 countries. Spain, Italy, Greece and France had three teams each; Germany, Russia, Turkey and Croatia two each; and Belgium, Slovenia, Israel and Yugoslavia one each. In the first phase, the teams were divided into four groups of six teams. All teams advanced to the second phase forming new groups matching the first three teams of a group with the last three from another. The teams that finished last in the new groups would lose a berth for their country in the next season's competition. After the first two phases and before the playoffs, the biggest surprise was to be found in Group G, where Limoges (6-10) and Real Madrid (7-9), the European champs of 1993 and 1995 respectively, were eliminated. Benetton Treviso (12-4), CSKA Moscow and PAOK Thessaloniki (12-7 each) and Estudiantes Madrid (8-8) were ahead of them. There were no major surprises in the other three groups.

In the three-game series of the eighthfinals, CSKA eliminated FC Barcelona 2-1. Barça lost its chance in Game 1, which it led by 9 with five minutes to go before CSKA won 81-79. After losing in Barcelona 75-63, CSKA won the third duel at home without problems 88-76. In other series, Partizan surprised Olympiacos 2-0 and Teamsystem Bologna eliminated Maccabi Tel Aviv 2-1. In the quarterfinals, Partizan had the home court advantage for having beaten group leader Olympiacos in the previous round and surprised CSKA, too, by 2-1. In the Bologna derby, Kinder defeated Teamsystem 2-0. Benetton would need three games to defeat Efes Pilsen and AEK Athens eliminated Alba Berlin in a sweep. Partizan, the 1992 champion, qualified for its third Final Four, Benetton its second, while Kinder and AEK would be making their debuts.

The big event in Barcelona took place from April 21 to 23, 1998. Coming in, only Partizan was thought to be an underdog, despite having a solid team with Dejan Tomasevic, Predrag Drobnjak, Dragan Lukovski and Ratko Varda (the last of whom was still playing in the Euroleague this season for Asseco Prokom Gdynia). The head coach was Milan-Kime Bogojevic, who was best known in the basketball world for having discovered Vlade Divac. On the Benetton bench sat head coach Zeljko Obradovic, a three-time Euroleague winner already with Partizan, Joventut and Real Madrid. On the court, his team had Ricky Pittis, Zeljko Rebraca, Stefano Rusconi, Henry Williams, Denis Marconato, Andrea Cracis and Andrea Niccolai. AEK had managed to break the dominance of the big Athens big teams (Panathinaikos and Olympiacos) and also the ones from Thessaloniki (Aris and PAOK). The team was coached by Giannis Ioannidis while the players featured myriad nationalities: Claudio Coldebella of Italy, Branislav Prelevic of Serbian and Greek origin, Michael Andersen and Mikel Larsen from Denmark, Jose Lasa from Spain, Willie Anderson and Victor Alexander from the United States, Michalis Kakiouzis from Greece, Russian-Greek Jake Tsakalidis......

Real Madrid: The return of a giant

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMT

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 2010-11 season, he offers a blog that honors the history of European basketball - even while history keeps being made!

The return of Real Madrid to the Final Four after 15 years and one more since its last Euroleague title is a more than apt reason to look back at the European history of the winningest club in the competition with eight crowns. Real Madrid is at the top of the list of 20 teams that have won the title at least once. After Madrid we find CSKA Moscow with six titles; Ignis Varese and Panathinaikos with five each; Maccabi Tel Aviv with 4+1 (counting the SuproLeague triumph in 2000-01); ASK Riga, Olimpia Milano and Jugoplastika with three each; Cibona, Cantu and FC Barcelona with two each, Virtus Bologna at 1+1 (counting the Euroleague title in 2000-01) and the teams with one title each: Dinamo Tbilisi, Bosna Sarajevio, Roma, Partizan, Limoges, Joventut, Olympiacos and Zalgiris.

Four finals in a row

Real Madrid has a special place in the history of the Champions Cup/Euroleague, not only because it has won most titles than anyone else. Madrid was the first team from Western Europe that tried and then managed to break the supremacy of Soviet teams in the first six editions of the competition. Real Madrid had played in the first edition of the competition in 1958, but it took it four years to get to its first final. In the first season, Real Madrid had to withdraw from the competition in the semis because the Francisco Franco regime didn't allow any kind of relationship with the USSR and ASK Riga got to the final without even playing. In the second year, 1959, Madrid was surprised by Etoile Charleville of France (79-65 in the second game after having won 50-39 at home) and in the third year the Spanish representative was Barcelona. In 1961, Real Madrid finally played against the Soviet team. The duels against ASK Riga were played in Paris, where Madrid won 78-75, and Prague, where ASK won 66-45.

In its fourth attempt, Real Madrid finally reached the final overcoming several obstacles in the way including Ignis varese in the quarterfinals and Olimpija Ljubljana in semis. The final was played, for the first time, in a single game on neutral ground. The game took place in Geneva, Switzerland, at the Patinoire des Vernets arena in front of 5,000 fans on June 29, 1962. Dinamo Tbilisi, who had defeated defending champ CSKA Moscow in the semifinals, beat Real Madrid 90-83 (38-36) despite 32 points by Real Madrid's American player Wayne Hightower.

For the new attempt in the 1962-63 season, Pedro Ferrandiz, the legendary Real Madrid coach who that season was sports director of the team while Joaquin Hernandez coached, found the pieces that the team lacked to become European champion, even though they would all have to wait one more year. From the United States had arrived forward Clifford Luyk, a brilliant player from Florida University, who was pursued by...