Yarone’s Weekend Joints - part I

Probably the best thing would be to start with an apology for the delay, and get this out of the way. I’d like to thank the academy and blame Chris for the delay, not because it’s really his fault, just cause it’s fun to blame him on everything. Give it a try…

Week 5 of the Euroleague was full of stories and anecdotes. Some wrote a new line in history books, others are on the way there. 

After only one team won on the road in Week 4, this round of games displayed no less than six road wins, and three home wins by up to five points. With Olimpija and Milano taking their first W’s, and CSKA came closer than ever to join the other 23 teams with a digit higher than 0 in the losses column, week 5 was one to remember. 

Well, at least until Week 6. 

Here’s the first part of the Euroleague Weekend Joints of Week 5 on Ballineurope.com.

Congratulations Jaka!

Well, first of all, let’s congratulate Jaka Laka for becoming this week the 4th player in history to reach 2,000 Euroleague points, but that wasn’t the only mark he celebrated at Kaunas on Thursday night. It was also Lakovic’s 150th game in the Euroleague and only the 5th game ever, during his eight Euroleague seasons career, he didn’t miss a shot from three point land, without counting nights he took just a single attempt. Jaka hit all his five attempts in this game, two more three pointers than the entire team of Zalgiris by the way (3/18…). Three times he had 2/2, while on January 9th, 2003 when he wore Pao’s green jersey and played at Tel Aviv, he had a 5/5 night as well. 

Perfecto Greer

Not only Jaka was hot this week. Olympiacos’ Lynn Greer was also 5/5 behind the arc, and for him it was the first ever Euroleague game in which he was perfect from that range, excluding a single 1/1 display.

Road bitter road

The Final Four hosts from Berlin suffered a 77-69 defeat @Olimpija, and allowed the Slovenians to celebrate their debut win of the season. After one leg in the Regular Season Alba stands on a 2-3 record and it’s easy to label them. Both wins were registered in the O2 arena in front of a packed arena, and in both cases it was a close win. On the road it’s a totally different story and there Alba lost all three games without a great giving a big fight. The eight point difference is deceiving as Olimpija held a double-digit lead in the closing minutes. Add the awful loss @Tau and a nine point defeat @FenerUlker and it’s easier to place your bets from now on when it comes to Alba. In the second leg they will play in Roma and Badalona, not the most comfortable spots to pick up a road win, so most probably in order to get some Euroleague oxygen, Alba will have to use the help of the O2 ha ha ha. 

Don’t miss out…

Just in case you missed Panionios’ Aaron Miles beating the half time buzzer with a super-cool coast-to-coast drive, check the Top 10 plays of Week 5 according to Euroleague-TV and survive the first nine to watch this beauty. 

The big crisis

Ok, this one has nothing to do with those red screens on your Wall Streets, but Efes Pilsen is in a big one of their own. The 81-95 home defeat to Real Madrid marks Efes’ third loss in a row. Two of them were in Abdi Ipacki, and just to keep you fresh the first was to Panionios, while the third was in Moscow, where it’s more than reasonable to lose, only Efes was trashed by 22 points after a 27-9 first quarter start of the champs. Over the weekend Efes (re)signed Predrag Drobnjak to fill in the center spot, that felt kinda empty after the injury of Mario Kasun. Drobnjak was on the only two Efes teams that ever made it to the Final Four, back in the early days of this decade, before he moved to the NBA. Now he’s far from his prime shape, but let’s see if his arrival will bring a good momentum to Ataman’s factory. Else, it could be Ataman himself the next to pay for the damage. If you’re looking for a win the last place you want to visit is Pionir and face Partizan, especially after they suffered an aching home loss, but that’s exactly what’s expecting Efes next week. Hopefully for Efes Drobnjak and Milos Vujanic will feel at home enough to stop the downward spiral.  

He’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

CSKA climbed to 5-0 and remained the only team with a perfect record in the Euroleague. To make things worse, on anyone who’s not a CSKA fan, this week marked the return of Matjaz Smodis. God forbid…

Heart-attack Partizan

The team to draw the most sympathy and empathy this week, beyond any doubt, is the group from Beograd. The one point loss to CSKA, and the heart-breaking finish, when Partizan missed no less than five attempts in a row in the last seconds to win the game, captured whoever enjoys an underdog win. Check out this fan-made video from the Pionir seats. The last play starts 6:40~ inside the clip. This fan won’t win the prestigious “Camera man of the year” award, but turn up the volume, hope your neighbor doesn’t have a machine-gun, and focus on the sights and especially sounds around the play. This was Partizan’s second single point defeat this season, and all of their five games were close ones, decided by no more than five points. 

32 is the new 11

Drive your car around the world, and other than a difficulty to avoid food poisoning (at some point or another) you might also find it hard to locate a good Spanish player playing outside the ACB. Other than in the NBA and Jorge, who just couldn’t say no to the crazy Khimki offer, there’s only one more player to name - Lottomatica’s Rodrigo De La Fuente. This week was a special one for the out stander. In the 76-67 home win over FenerUlker, at the age of 32, after 11 seasons in the Euroleague and 172 games, he set a career high in rebounds by collecting 11. 

Damn rims

Prokom’s home court is called the “Arena of 100 years” and it certainly won’t be named anytime soon “Arena of 100 points”. The rims there are anything but friendly to most visiting teams. Pao escaped with a 60-67 win but they have nothing to be ashamed of. In the last six games in front of those rims no team scored more than 68 points. 

Arc range darkness

Lottomatica wrote their fourth win in a row, and would probably revenge Alba, for their only defeat so far, next week in the Palalottomatica, but something strange happened in their win this week over the Istanbul’s chocolate factory of FenerUlker. All of Roma’s hits from long range were scored by the big guys. Power-forwards Roberto Gabini and Angelo Gigli were 3/3 from the distance, while all the others combined 0/6. No outside hit was made by the guards, despite one thing Repesa doesn’t miss is guards who can hit the ball. The reason was that while on the romantic scene being passive sometimes actually works, in basketball if you don’t hit you can’t score. Sani Becirovic and Allan Ray didn’t try even once from that distance, while Ibrahim Jaaber stepped up with a single attempt. For Sani it was only the second time he finished a game without taking a long range shot in his last 18 Euroleague games, while Ray broke a streak of 21 games in which he made the effort. 

Road bitter road - part II

So CSKA are 5-0 but this week was the second time in a row the Euroleague champs have trouble to score and win on the road. Their previous trip out of Moscow finished with a 54-58 win in Madrid behind a terrible shooting day. The 62-63 loss in Beograd saw CSKA connect only a duo of baskets from long range in 14 attempts. Yikes! That wasn’t the only reason Partizan came so close, but to read on the second, and more peculiar one, wait for the second part. 

Off-bench Diamantidis 

Some would tell you that a team must have a stable starting five for things to work, but Zeljko Obradovic will reply to that with however you say “Bullshit” in Serb. Often Obra changes his starting line-up, but in Sopot it was standing out more than the usual. Batiste, Spanoulis, Tsartsaris, Hatzivrettas and Kecman on court. On the bench waited five that can assemble one of the best line ups in the Euroleague: Jasikevicius (we’ll get back to him in part two…), Pekovic, Nicholas, Fotsis and Diamantditis. The last still managed to finish with the best index rating of the night with 26, but broke a streak of 66 games in which he was a starter for Pao. The last time Dimitris saw the jump ball from the bench was in Week 4 of the 2005/06 season, andeven then, on November 24th 2005, in OAKA he was the best player on the team and finished with an index rating of 23. 

Retro Le Mans

It’s shocking enough Le Mans scored 87 points in four quarters against Olympiacos, but the fact they, once again, lost a close game is something stat experts need to look into. Just a reminder, if you missed that part here in the previous weeks, last season, under a different coach and different roster, Le Mans also lost all their first five Euroleague season games in the closing plays. This season they already lost two games in overtime, first @Maccabi and this week vs. Olympiacos. The bad news for Le Mans is that last season, in Week 6, the close losses streak was put to an end, not in the positive way, with a 91-71 defeat @Cibona. Next week they host Unicaja. We shall see….

The “Disgrace Escaping” mission

After five weeks Zalgiris stand on a 0-5 record. It’s likely for the Kaunas club to finish their season earlier than expected, and considering the off-court happening around the club this season it’s reasonable, but in the remaining five games they’ll need to work hard to escape disgrace. Up to today Zalgiris stands on a horrible 19.6 turnovers per game average. Right and far behind are SLUC Nancy with “only” 16.8. Now, being behind Nancy isn’t such a big shame, it’s the history books awaiting for Zalgiris. Unless a big improvement will arrive soon to Kaunas they’ll be known as the team that made more turnovers per game than any other team in a season. In all of the Euroleague history, under ULEB (excluding the first season which its stats isn’t available on the web), the team with the highest tpg average was the 2001/02….London Towers with 18.0 per game. 

Olympic Qualifying Tournament 2008: Day 1

With about 24 hours until the Olympic Qualifying Tournament starts, let’s have a look at the teams and the chances for each team to make it to the big goal: the Olympics in Beijing. Read more