Euroleague day 7
OlympiakosBarça
Those pop and there was not stop. It was presumed that Olympiacos would be the great rival of the course – also Panathinaikos – as soon as they put together the pieces, a team made with a checkbook and good taste. His cooking was a matter of time and against Barcelona he ended up turning golden to shout from the rooftops and in two matches [ya descarriló al Madrid hace un par de días] who wants and can be the king of the orange ball. The Blaugrana suffered it, as they have a very successful team, although insufficient for now, still a dream when Olympiacos is a reality.
That was already clear in the first quarter, since Barça distilled high-quality basketball. Little, however, in the face of the successive rival attacks and, above all, the opposing voracity of the last minute and a half, when the Greeks got tired of stealing balls and chained three dunks, physical power and the run with McKissic in front and with Vezenkov as opening act. A blow that Barcelona did not see coming (21-17).
Barça’s big problem, something that seems endemic no matter how many centimeters it accumulates (Fall, Vesely, Hernangómez, Metu and the young Sarr), is its tepidity on the rebound. A defect that must be improved quickly if it wants to impose its law on the big stages. Something that did not happen in the second chapter (44-36), when the rim became dwarfed and the opponent became bigger with the circulation of the ball, the pressure and the electric defense, in addition to the outside shot. And, of course, the rebound.
Barça did not recover at the restart (65-50), with tremors under the rim and thick in the shot, surpassed by an opponent who played with an extra pace, to the point that he made a mess where it hurts the most because the The duel was a street runner, dizzying comings and goings, much to the liking of coach Peñarroya. Thus, hurt and without arguments, Barça lowered its arms in the epilogue to Fournier and Vezenkov, accepting that Olympiacos is a great team that is too much for some Barça players who must keep the positive. It turns out that with the passing of the challenges, he grows and matures around Punter and Parker, two players who do not understand contexts or corsets, capable of putting together the shot in a jiffy, athletic and with many points in their hands, a basketball on board. The cocktail has more ingredients: the orchestra director Juan Núñez; a 4-5 like Metu, a dancer on the parket and a devourer under the hoop, a joker if there ever was one; and the old guard with Satoransky and Vesely. But none of this works if there is no rebound and if the shots don’t go in. Except against the already great Olympiacos.
Real Madrid, for its part, did not know how to close the duel against Maccabi and fell again (79-78) in Europe, surpassed by Lee (19) and Jokubaitis (17), credited with defeat away from home because it has not celebrated any victory away from home since the course began (perhaps in the semifinal of the Super Cup). A worrying blow.
