Watching from outside

I have to say, after so many years of competing in the Final Four, watching it from the outside is going to be a tough feeling for me. Still, I surely will be cheering for CSKA, a club full of friends with whom I’ve worked and played, won and lost, suffered and enjoyed basketball over the course of four fantastic seasons.

Now, we have great teams in the Final Four this season. If you look at the stats, CSKA, Barcelona and Olympiakos are at the top of index ratings and Partizan is not that far away from them as well. And current play-off system leaves no doubt that really worthy sides get to the Final Four.

The first semifinal game will be a rematch of last year’s semis between CSKA and Barcelona. In a recent interview, Barca’s head coach Xavier Pascual (who will be a strong candidate for the Coach of the Year award this season together with Partizan’s Dusko Vujosevic) said that the outcome of the 2009 game was decided purely by the outstanding shooting percentage of Ramunas Siskauskas. Honestly, I’ll allow myself to disagree here, but the most important thing is to understand that this year Barcelona will try to do a lot of things differently. There are two main factors that make current Catalonian squad more dangerous for CSKA. The first one is Ricky Rubio, Euroleague’s Rising Star who’s shown that he is already mature enough not only to lead the club to the best record in the Euroleague but also to dramatically improve the quality of its basketball. The other is Pete Mickeal, Barca’s primary option at the small forward position. CSKA players have already had a chance to face him. It happened in the 2008 Final Four semifinals when Mickeal was with the Tau Vitoria side. And Barca’s frontcourt is quite different this year as well. They may lack an inside scorer of David Andersen’s stature, but the addition of NDong and Morris made the club much more athletic and Erazem Lorbek is very productive in the low post for them.

I still believe that Barcelona’s main strength is its defense which has improved a lot since last year

That said, I still believe that Barcelona’s main strength is its defense which has improved a lot since last year. Their guards are showing much more aggression on the perimeter as now they have proven shot-blockers behind their backs who can cover up for them and intimidate opponents.

As far as offense is concerned, I’m sure Evgeny Pashutin and his staff will be talking at length about the post-up ability of Pete Mickeal and also about those pick-and-rolls run by Rubio and Navarro that usually generate lots of scoring opportunities for them. Actually, I believe that defending pick-and-rolls and rebounding will be key factors that’ll determine the outcome of the game.

It’s likely that most people will watch the second semifinal clash thinking that Olympiakos will handily beat Partizan. Personally, I don’t think it’s going to be an easy match-up and I’m sure Panagiotis Giannakis and his players are fully aware of this. The reason I’m saying this is when you’re playing Partizan (and I experienced that last year with CSKA), the first thing you have to do is figure how to attack them. They possess a very tall and powerful frontline composed of Jan Vesely, Lawrence Roberts and towering 229-cm center Slavko Vranes. Most of the times, it gives them total security under the basket that comes with the ability to break opponent’s inside game. That leads to a lot of pressure being put on the other team’s shooters, who now know they have to attack from the outside and high-post area with extreme precision if they want to beat Partizan.

Partizan is not a high-scoring team, but in Dusan Kecman they have a player who’s already won a number of crucial games this season

For sure, Olympiakos has a ton of quality shooters, even among their big men. And they will definitely attempt to attack the basket with penetration of Josh Childress and their perimeter players. But I think that Theo Papaloukas could be a real difference-maker here. If he goes to the low post and uses his size and skill set, it will create a definite advantage for Olympiakos. In such case, Partizan will be forced to decide whether to double him (thus leaving Nicola Vujcic in the high-post area or someone else on the perimeter unguarded) or just let him operate one-on-one.

Partizan is not a high-scoring team, but in Dusan Kecman they have a player who’s already won a number of crucial games this season – like that match versus Panathinaikos in Athens or their first play-off encounter with Maccabi Tel-Aviv, not to mention Kecman’s crunch-time heroics that won his club the Adriatic League.

Right now, most people are betting that the big Final will be decided between Olympiacos and Barcelona. Moreover, we know that for each of the last three seasons there were no surprises as teams that were considered favorites to get to the Final game actually accomplished that. Today I really wish CSKA pulls off an upset. But if Barca wins it all, then, as I’ve recently mentioned in a column I wrote for the El Pais newspaper, we’ll have to admit they’re the worthy champions of Europe. Especially given the fact that they’ve already beaten Panathinaikos, Real Madrid and Siena on the way to the Final Four and now have to go through CSKA and the winner of the Olympiakos – Partizan game.