Yarone’s Weekend Joints
Week 6, the beginning of the second leg in the regular season under the new format, was better than a big fat joint next to a banana-coconut shake with cream on top, on a Caribbean island with Beyonce whispering in your ear, “Did you enjoy my breakfast, darling?” as you’re already thinking about dinner.
Ok, maybe not THAT great, but it was interesting. A bit. Here and there. Sometimes. Randomly.
Here’s why.
Future telling
If Le Mans’ replica of last season’s performance - five close losses against a diversity of teams from different levels, at home and on the road - hadn’t already been amazing enough thus far, Week 6 made it even more incredible. Last year, the streak of close losses was stopped in Week 6 with a big 91-71 defeat at Cibona. This season Le Mans’ streak of close losses stopped in … Week 6 with a big 87-55 defeat to Unicaja at home. With this in mind, it’s time to predict the future. Last season, the French tallied their first win only in Week 13, but that won’t happen this year, as their season will end if they keep losing, after ten games. With matching to the new format, let’s say that just like last year the team of coach Jackson will escape from a win-free season one week before the end, at home against Air Avellino.
Pini vs. Prkacin
Maccabi’s Pini Gershon has decided that Nikola Prkacin is the key to Cibona’s success. Not a bad idea and in order to get that big obstacle out of his way, he did whatever it took, even if it made him look bad for a couple of minutes. Pini thought Prkacin would start so to the tipoff he sent his best big-guy defender, Yaniv Green, and kept Lior Eliyahu on the bench. On the other side of court, Cibona’s coach Velimir Persovic had different thoughts and kept his big guy on the bench. Gershon noticed this, and after 19 seconds made his first substitution - Green out, Eliyahu in - probably the quickest in Euroleague’s history.
Perasovic tried to ride that wave and probably didn’t think his opponent would react when he sent Prkacin in after 112 seconds of play. The three-time European champ, who meanwhile had replaced Derrick Sharp with Tal Burstein, reacted right away with his third sub in less than two minutes: Eliyahu back on the bench, Green once again in.
The outcome was exactly as Pini planned. With 4:39 to play in the first quarter, Green drew an offensive foul from Prkacin while fighting for position. It was the second foul for the big Croat, who was frustrated enough to argue with the refs and earn a technical for three fouls after less than six minutes for Cibona’s key player. Maccabi couldn’t ask for more and used this to take an early double-digit lead: perfect execution of a game plan. Green was sent back to the bench right that second and Eliyahu went back to start his MVP of the week show…
The jinx is dead
One more Gershon piece. Believe it or not, but in all of his seasons with Maccabi Tel Aviv, and in those seasons he reached two Euroleague finals and won three titles, Pini Gershon has never won the Week 6 game with Maccabi - vs. Olympiacos, at Krka Novo Mesto, vs. CSKA, at Olimpija, and vs. Rytas. Five seasons, five losses. Since then, Gershon moved to Olympiacos and in both seasons has won Week 6, while at the same time Maccabi, under two different coaches, won Week 6 as well. On Thursday night, it wasn’t fair.
Roma men can’t shoot
The absence of Sani surely didn’t help, but even without him it doesn’t look good for Lottomatica Roma and coach Jasmin Repesa. For the second week in a row, Lottomatica got no three pointers from the backcourt. This week, they connected only twice and both shots were made by Roberto Gabini. Ibrahim Jaaber, Allan Ray, Rodrigo De La Fuente, Jacopo Giachetti and Brandon Jennings finished a combined 0-for-7 from distance, as the team reached a terrible total of 2-for-10. Then again, if Repesa and the gang still managed to win both games, perhaps that’s nothing but good news.
Ricky is back!
It was less than three minutes on court, but Ricky Rubio is back in action. In his first minutes of the season, including ACB, he gave a small example of what we’re about to see in the weeks to come. In that short time, he grabbed one rebound, two assists, a single steal and drew one foul. Without taking a single shot or making a single mistake, he reached an index of five in less than three minutes.
The symbolic turnover
The last play by CSKA in Milano finished with a turnover by Ramunas Siskauskas. He fell, lost control of the ball and saw the round orange end up between Milanese fingers. Since leaving Benetton, Siska has been not only one of the best players in Europe, but also one who rarely loses the ball. From the day he joined Pao to 10 days ago, he stood on 44 turnovers in 48 games. Considering the number of balls that go through his hands and the attention he gets from the opposing defense, it’s anything but easy to stick with a tpg average of lower than 1.0 tpg. In the last two Euroleague weeks, something has changed. Three turnovers at Partizan, combined with four he committed in Milano, are nearly 16% of what he has made in over two full seasons. The final-play turnover was symbolic in a way.
Aksis
Still in the turnover business, check out the attached table. Listed are the players averaging the most turnovers in each Euroleague regular season this decade. Up until this season, Sergey Bazarevic was atop this list with an average of 4.5 in the debut ULEB Euroleague season. Since then, nobody has reached more than 4.0 tpg. Unless something changes in the next four weeks, we can expect to see Bazarevich drop to the second place with a record that will be hard to break. SLUC Nancy’s Ricardo Greer stands on an awful 5.17 ratio after six games. His “best” performance included only three turnovers, while his worst, when he met Diamantidis, stopped with eight.
Still U-70
Zalgiris have four more games left in this nightmare season. The team is still in search for a debut win, and with games at Montepaschi and at Barcelona still on their schedule, its not a very cheering page to look at if you’re from Kaunas. Right before the Xmas break, they host Prokom, which will give them a chance to get that prospective W. On BallinEurope, we gave them another challenge: to reach 70 points in a single game. This week, they came as close as possible: After gathering only 26 in the first half, at the final buzzer the scoreboard showed 69. A season high for Zalgiris but far from enough.
Congratulating a 7-footer
When was the last time you had a chance to congratulate a Senegalese seven-footer? On Thursday night Unicaja’s Boniface N’dong scored his very first Euroleague three-pointer on his first attempt this season, but has second attempt including his debut season when he tried and failed in a game in which Unicaja lost by a big margin at Efes. N’doong also tied his best index rating (23) performance and set a new individual high in points (19). At age 31 (at least the documents say so), the tops in Europe finally recognize N’dong as a productive key big guy.
The weekly battle
One payback for a debt from last week, when the race between David Bluthenthal and Dewarick Spencer was left out of the column. Back then, Spencer took the lead in the “Who takes more field goal shots” dash by taking 17 shots against Bluth’s 11. This week, Spencer once again had the upper hand, winning 13-10. After six weeks, with probably only four more to go in their Euroleague season, Spencer leads 4-2. The big guy will have to step up in the next weeks to recover from this deficit.
My Euroleague Wednesday
December 4, 2008 by Christophe · 2 Comments
When I came home tonight, I immediately checked on the situation in the different Euroleague games was. And it looked like the two first games of the day would become blowouts: Olympiacos finally beat Air Avellino without any trouble, but the score between Panionios and Real Madrid somehow surprised me as the Greeks were up by like 20 points. A quick check on Skype gave me the explication, Panionios had a 31-6 run.
But the second half of the game gave us a fantastic opportunity to see a nice scoring run, as Real Madrid made an incredible 31-5 run in order to get as close as two points in the last two minutes. Despite the big trouble the Euroleague TV commentator had in pronouncing the Greek names, we had a real nail-biter in the final seconds. And it was Aaron Miles with two very bad decisions against the Real Madrid zone that gave Real Madrid the possibility to lead for the first time in the second half. The momentum switch was really tangible through the DSL lines. But a super stupid foul by Alex Mumbru gave a two-point lead back to Panionios with two free throws, but Marko Tomas had to step to the line after a Partizan-CSKA final-second possession and he made both. But the aforementioned Miles was the game winner with an “easy layup” according to the commentator after a full-court run.
Speaking of close games, I switched to Le Mans for their game against Le Mans with Alain “Coffee” Koffi on the jump ball. So I preferred to turn down the sound of EL.TV and put Pionir on full power on RTS Sat despite not understanding a word of the probably very interesting Serbian announcers. Le Mans came off a really bad start and trailed 23-11 after the first quarter while Serbian TV had problems with the sound and the graphics, as the Grobari were probably jumping on the cables.
A very interesting call happened in the meantime in Belgrade, where Kaya Peker got an offensive foul for pushing Stephane Lasme’s arm away on a layup attempt. This is a very common call in the United States but is hardly every seen in Europe, especially if it happens in the no-offensive-foul call zone of the half-circle. At the same time, Pape Badiane scores for Unicaja on a Enzo Tsonga assist according to the commentator. (NB.: both are players of Le Mans) I have to add that I really like EL.TV but these are incredible errors, especially if you mess up player names four times in two minutes.
In Le Mans, we have halftime and the game between AJ Milano and CSKA Moscow seems already decided after eight minutes, when the Russians lead 21-5 in the once again half-empty Datchforum in Milan. IN addition to all the trouble, there seems to be a general sound problem with Euroleague games tonight as now even the EL.TV commentators have shut up and no sound from the arenas is coming out of my speakers. Watching basketball without sound is really strange — kinda like Sarunas Jasikevicius without the talking. Oh, it’s halftime in Belgrade on a buzzer-beating three-pointer by Charles Smith (1m95) over Slavko Vranes (2m29).
And during halftime, it is time for a little off-topic. On the Serbian RTS Sat channel, the break is used for advertising by travel agencies in Switzerland and German cell phone companies. Globalization! On the other hand, I just read that the Bundesliga team LTi Giessen 46ers signed a new manager in Vladi Bogojevic. Nothing special, you may think, but knowing the difficult financial situation of the German team, GM Christoph Syring told the press: I really believe that much in Vladi’s abilities, that I have accepted a reduction to my own salary. You must be kidding me…
While I was writing this off-topic, Unicaja has already increased their lead to 18 and we will have another blowout win very probably tonight as now, even Boniface N’Dong hits a three pointer after a multitude of dunks to close a 19-2 run in the last quarter. This is really a pity to watch the French team right now where only Alain Koffi seems to be concerned.
So it’s time to move to Milan, where Armani Jeans is coming back in the race as they start the second half on an 11-2 run to be at only eight points down. But that’s the moment for EL.TV blocks the stream for whatever reason. In Belgrade, Partizan is still holding their advantage so it looks like Milano is the place to be to see some exciting action tonight. And it seems also to be the night of the interesting referee decisions as one of the three refs gets caught with the new backcourt rules and calls a violation to AJ Milano but immediately takes it back as he was wrong. By the way, has anybody mentioned that Piero Bucchi is as always the best dressed head coach of the Euroleague? Well, it may be no surprise when you are sponsored by Armani Jeans.
In the meantime, Novica Velcikovic decides the game in Belgrade for another win of Partizan against Efes Pilsen despite some late second turnovers by Uros Tripkovic. David Hawkins however scores a very big bucket to give Milano a four-point lead with three minutes to go. As I said beforehand in David Hein’s Live Blog, I see AJ Milano having a chance beating CSKA but I really didn’t believe in my words after the first minutes of the game. (OT: I just got outbid on an Ebay auction, damn…)
As incredible as my loss in the Ebay auction is, the fact that Victor Khryapa may become the game winner in Milan with a big time steal to open the final minute. But it is David Hawkins who brings AJ Milano back in front with two very tough shots over the former Chicago Bull. And the impossible happens, as Ramunas Siskauskas loses the ball and the win five seconds before the buzzer, with AJ Milano (as predicted) winning over the heretofore unbeaten Russian team.
What a great ending to my Euroleague Wednesday!
NIKEiD Fantasy Challenge: Now what?
November 26, 2008 by Christophe · 5 Comments
Currently, it looks like a lot of decisions have been made in the Euroleague fantasy league. The time to gain sure credits is nearly over, and only a few players are still available at reasonable prices to give you good credit boosts. I’m thinking here mainly about players like Mirza Begic (49 credits) or Sergio Llull (26 credits). But if you don’t have them in your team already, it’s really time to think about what your goal is.
My personal moves
As for myself, I have enough credits right now so I have to check which players can bring me the most credits for the least value right now: This is the reason why I’m selling Ersan Ilyasova, who has not been in his best shape recently. He’s still worth decent value, so it’s a good move in order to buy a more productive player. I’ll use this money to replace one of my two young point guards and give Zygimantas Janavicius away to bring in Zoran Planinic: He should be able to bring up some good numbers in Serbia against Partizan Belgrade. In the paint, I’m bringing in Nikola Pekovic, as I think that he’s now at a good value of 57 credits and should easily dominate against Asseco Prokom.
OUT: Ersan Ilyasova (FC Barcelona) and Zygimantas Janavicius (Zalgiris Kaunas).
IN: Zoran Planinic (CSKA Moscow) and Nikola Pekovic (Panathinaikos).
Take care of injury minutes
A good move to get interesting players right now is to check out the Injury List for possible “playing-time gainers.” For example, Marcus Haislip is out for three weeks so Boniface N’Dong should see some major playing time this week. Additionally, Carlos Jimenez will probably have a nice game in the absence of the high-flying US player.
With Marko Milic injured and Union Olimpija playing against ALBA Berlin, it may be interesting to gamble on Damjan Rudez who should profit from Milic’ absence. He is currently a bargain at 22 credits and if you want to take some risks, he may bring you 10 or more ranking points this week.
See who’s hot right now
Players often go on streaks, by which I mean they play a few good games in a row. One of these players currently is Mike Hall of AJ Milano. He was the MVP of the last game day, despite his team’s loss in Madrid. Hall managed to score 28 ranking points, however, and he is currently priced at only 30.4 credits: a sure winner in terms of credits first of all, but he looks particularly hot as he came up with a valiant 18 in the weekend’s domestic league game against Air Avellino. AJ Milano will play at home against Panionios, and the chances to earn the 10% bonus with Hall are also quite good.
Another guy who is hot right now is Charles Smith; the US-born guard will play against his former team Real Madrid, and the chances of him coming up with a great scoring effort for his Efes Pilsen squad are good. At 36.7 ranking points, Smith is a good value with which to fill up your roster, and his 18-point performance this weekend in the Turkish league shows that Smith is ready to score.
Yarone’s Friday’s joints
October 24, 2008 by Yarone · 4 Comments
Sofoklis Schortsianitis (Olympiacos) – No shot attempts at all and only one foul in 7:42 minutes. Only once before has Schortsianitis finished a Euroleague game without a single shot attempt and that was when he played only two minutes.
Milos Teodosic (Olympiacos) – How often did you get to see this Serbian scorer finish with zero three-point attempts in 14:40? It happened once last season. If this were to continue this season, it would mean Yannakis is turning the kid from a scoring machine into a true team player. Keep an eye out.
Loren Woods (Zalgiris) set a Euroleague career high with 17 points and nine defensive rebounds against Pao, who have one of the best front lines in Europe.
Tamar Slay (Avelino) had his Euroleague debut as well against a Greek team, but we won’t mention this game on his resume, with his 1-of-10 from the field and -11 VAL.
Marcus Brown (Maccabi) – On Monday, Brown took two flights to arrive in Tel Aviv in the afternoon from Kaunas. The following day, he took two more flights to get from Tel Aviv to Zagreb with his new team. In total, Brown has probably had more flights than practices with his new team. Nevertheless, he played 27:44.
Willie Deans (Zalgiris) - In his Euroleague debut, Deans finished 1-of-10 from the field and -9 VAL against Pao.
Tau Ceramica Vitoria (ACB) used the shortest rotation this week with only eight players. Efes used nine, with one player on the floor for just 22 seconds. All other teams used between nine and 12 players
Rawle Marshall (Cibona) – Simply fun to watch. 20 points, 5-of-9 from the field, 3 rebounds, 3 steals, zero turnovers, 7 fouls drawn, and 29 VAL in a Euroleague debut. All cold numbers. Bottom line: Simply fun to watch.
Dimitris Diamantidis (Panathinaikos) – The best defender award winner for the past four years and one of the top three ball stealers on The Continent played 25:42 against Zalgiris with zero steals.
Dewarick Spencer & David Bluthenthal (Le Mans) – Now this could be a weekly check: Which of these two took more shots for his team? This time, Bluth wins 14-13 and also scores better accuracy.
Theodoros Papaloukas (Olympiacos) - 2,380 days have passed between 18/04/02 and today. Back then, Theo played his last Euroleague game for the Reds; yesterday, he made his rdappearance. Back then, he finished the game with 26:53 in playing time, 8 points, 3 rebounds and a VAL of 16. Today, he played only 90 seconds less, still scored 8 points, still grabbed 3 rebounds, and notched a VAL of 15 …consistency over a six-year span.
Avelino (LEGA) – In its Euroleague debut, the small Italian team registered a VAL of 36. Often this is less than the best weekly VAL from a single player.
Armani Jeans Milano (LEGA) – The game at Moscow was far from Milano’s Euroleague debut but under the new hat and management, expectations were different. Just like Avelino, another Italian team finished a game against a Final Four contender with a poor VAL rating of 36.
Tau (ACB) and Fenerbahce (TBL) combined for 52 attempts from long range on a night on which neither surpassed 30%.
Drew Nicholas (Panathinaikos) – After three seasons in a row over 40% from long range, the US shooter started his career in green with an 0-for-3 performance from long range.
Juan Carlos Navarro (Barcelona) – La Bomba bombed on the NBA runnerups 34 points less than a week ago. Last night, against SLUC Nancy empire, Navarro celebrated his return to the Euroleague with only four points and 1-of-8 from the field.
Derrick Sharp (Maccabi) – The veteran didn’t play a single second the entire game in Zagreb. The last time a Maccabi coach chose not to use Derrick was on 6 January 2000. After a 195-game streak and 3,213 days, a new count begins. Back then, in the first week of the millennium, Maccabi was just 1-of-6 from long range. Last night they showed a poor 4-or-16. Whether that’s a coincidence or not, you be the judge.
Oguz Savas (Fenerbahce) – The Turkish center is a decent rebounder, sometimes even more, but in Vitoria spent more than 23 minutes on the court and finished without a single rebound. This happened to Savas only once all of last season and back then, he played only five minutes.
Milos Vujanic (Efes) is officially back. The Serbian point guard beat his former team by a single point and was his team’s top scorer with 17 and just a single missed shot. The last time Vujanic scored more than 17 in a Euroleague game was on 9 March 2005 (that’s 1,324 days if you’re curious), when his Fortitudo Bologna won at Zalgiris by a single point as well and Vujanic had 18.
Real Madrid (ACB) – No fewer than eight players wrote a double-digit VAL in the 21-point cruise to victory against Olimpija.
Ibrahim Jabber, Ray Allan, Rodrigo De La Fuente, Brandon Jennings and Sanice Becirovic (Roma) – Coach Repesa’s backcourt combined for 4-of-18 inside the arc against Alba.
Nana Mensah-Bonsu (Joventut) had a very busy night under both baskets. Around Joventut’s rim he blocked three shots but on the other end was blocked three times as well. Not many players get to experience such activity on both ends on the floor.
Partizan (YUBA) and Maccabi (BSL) – Both lost by a single basket difference, the smallest margins of the first week, but in both cases it was after a three pointer at the buzzer that only made it look closer than it really was.
Alba (BBL) – No less than 1,723 days, since 4 February 2004, when Alba won their last Euroleague game. It was a 16 point triumph over Efes. John Best, Jovo Stanojevic, Marko Pesic and DeJuan Collins were the top scorers for Alba then. Not a single player on Alba has survived on the team since that season.
Brandon Jennings (Lottomatica) – The most standout number in the game that took Jennings’ Euroleague virginity is his 22 minutes with just a single turnover. Brandon also took nine shots from the field, more than any other Roma player yesterday.
Montepaschi (LEGA) were shooting better outside the arc (48% with 12 made) than inside it (40.5% with 15 made) in the nine-point win over Prokokm.
Boniface Ndong, Marcus Haislip and Robert Archibald (Unicaja) – The team’s three big men were also its three top scorers with 14, 13 and 11 points, respectively, over Le Man’s bigs.
Alain Koffi (Le Mans) – The athletic big man has finished each of his five seasons in the ULEB Cup and Euroleague with seven to nine assists total. On Wednesday night at Unicaja, the local stat guys bestowed him with no less than three, obviously a career high, and a great start to set a new season record as well.
(In case you are too shy to leave a comment here, you can always contact Yarone by sending him an email at arbel@ballineurope.com)
Euroleague: Unicaja Malaga, Spain
October 15, 2008 by Christophe · 1 Comment
For today’s preview on Unicaja Malaga, we are proud to have among us a writer from one of the most impressive websites about European basketball, Daniel Barranquero of acb.com. Daniel is based in Malaga and gives us his unique inside view on the regular Euroleague participant.
Overall record prediction: 6-4
It’s not common practice to talk about revolution in a team which only has bought four players and a coach. But this Unicaja is a new team. Same players, same supporters, same goals but a different style: Aito style. Aito García Reneses, the Spanish National Team head coach in the last Olympic Games, left the squad after winning the silver medal in Beijing and signed a three -year deal with Unicaja.
García Reneses has a large list of accomplishments in his 35-year career, but he still has a strong and melancholy desire. He yearns for the Euroleague title. The coach has reached the Final Four six times, but he never fulfilled his dream of raising the European trophy. In Malaga, Aito will have an ambitious team which plays its eighth Euroleague in a row and wants to grow in Europe. For this reason, Unicaja has shaped a powerful roster to be a solid contender in the best competition of the continent.
Unicaja has signed Omar Cook with the hope that the player of the Montenegro NT would be a nice complimentary, at least better than Bojan Popovic, to Carlos Cabezas. The Malaga-born point guard desires to convince his new coach that it was a mistake not to call him for the Olympic Games.
The backcourt new leader may be Thomas Kelati, a great addition who dazzled in ULEB Cup last year playing with PGE Turow. The only professional basketball player with Eritrean roots, promises defense and points and would make a great duo with Berni Rodríguez, but the international player suffers an ankle injury and faces now about three months of recovery. His replacement is the explosive Joseph Gomis, the second best scorer in ACB last season. Besides, the long-time captain of Spain Carlos Jimenez, who retired from his national team last summer, and the Czech Jiri Welsch, who needs to improve his performance in Unicaja, also guarantee defense and teamwork.
Marcus Haislip is expected to have a prominent role in the frontcourt. The dynamic power forward of Malaga is freakishly athletic, has amazed Europe with his dunks and scores easily… but he has not exploded, he´s not yet the star he was supposed to be. German Gabriel, a great promise of the “Golden Boys Generation”, is now one of the best three-point specialists of the team but he´s maybe too soft and weak on defense to play a lot of minutes with Aíto. However, the two centers of Unicaja, Robert Archibald and Boniface Ndong, assure consistency, strength and rebounds. Robert is a well-known player for Garcia Reneses (they were together in Badalona) and ‘Boni’ proved last season that he can be one of the most outstanding centers in Spain and Europe. Moreover, the promising Brazilian Vitor Faverani will try to take advantage of his opportunities.
Unicaja has the mark of Aíto García Reneses, the substitute of the successful Sergio Scariolo. The team has been the only unbeaten in the ACB preseason and its two first games in the league were wonderful, beating Real Madrid and Cajasol and playing at high level. The main goal of the squad is to leave the irregularity behind. In fact, in these last years, European fans who partipate in basketball forums talked sarcastically about “Unicajism” (“Unicajian Performance Fluctuation Syndrome: UPFS”) to describe the irregularty of team, a box of surprises capable of the best and the worst.
In short, with an accessible group, Top-16 is an obligation for Unicaja; Final Four, a possibility. The title? Just a dream, by now…
Final Four participants: Montepaschi Siena, CSKA Moscow, Regal FC Barcelona, Olympiacos
Euroleague winner: Olympiacos
written by Daniel Barranquero
