One day before the tip-off in Game 3 in the EuroLeague Playoffs, Uğur Yılmaz, Nick Flynt and Sebastian Komianos share their raw notes with observations, comments and thoughts for the first two games of the series. To make reading more convenient, Uğur’s text is in blue, Nick’s in green and Seb’s in red.

Fenerbahce – Zalgiris

First match in this series has brought up a structural issue for Zalgiris in the big men department. Even though Lauvergne is out for Fener and Vesely has returned from a knee operation and is said to be still not pain free, Jankunas’ absence has hurt Zalgiris more than Fener’s thin big men rotation has hurt Fener. Without Jankunas, Zalgiris has to rely on Deon Thompson and Kavaliauskas as back-up bigs. And the lack of flexibility of Zalgiris’ wings defensively also comes to play here. No Zalgiris wing would be able to hold minutes at the 4 spot due to defensive reasons whereas Fener has Datome and Kalinic as two options to slide down there. That is the structural issue with Zalgiris in this series. Depth of big men.

Continuing from the first point, Deon Thompson especially had a horrific first match. If I’m not mistaken, with the exception of Sinan Guler and Melih Mahmutoglu, every other Fenerbahce player scored on him, including the youngster Tarik Biberovic. He was by far the worst player on the court. Fast forward to two days later and he was somehow a valuable player for Zalgiris. It allowed Saras to not having to use Kavaliauskas. Deon Thompson outplayed Jan Vesely defensively in the second match, which was huge for Zalgiris and a decent sized miracle.

People who prefer to not pay attention to defence will tell you that Vesely has woken up a bit in the 2nd match vs the first but he was average for his standards on defence in the first match (which is good overall) but awful in the 2nd. Also did not see Datome’s exceptional help defence which allowed him to surpass Kalinic as Fener’s 2nd best defender throughout the regular season. All in all, Zalgiris shot %71 from inside the 3 point line in the 2nd match. There has to be some sort of correlation there, if not direct causality. Vesely’s health is vital for Fenerbahce in this series. He is their most important and best player, and his defensive performance matters so much more than offence.

Beware the 2011 Olympiacos syndrome.

I still can’t believe it was Ulanovas of all people to power a Zalgiris upset win, playing 33 minutes. I told Seb that there was no way ZAL would hold the lead — they’d cool off, the cream of Fenerbahce would rise to the top…but the boys in green somehow did manage to keep up their pace, just barely.

What Uğur mentions, for the uninitiated, is an Olympiacos BC team, employing, at the time, players like Spanoulis, Papaloukas, Teodosic, Halperin, Jamon Gordon, Papanikolaou, Bourousis and Nesterovic, crushing Montepaschi Siena by 48 points in Game 1 of the series and then surrendering to them entirely in every single one of the next 3 games, by 17, 9 and 12. A deep technical description of what happened is that the reds had by far the names-heaviest roster but after a Game 1 in which nothing was going in for Siena (9/46 2FGs and 3/15 3FGs!), the Italian side shot with percentages higher than 50% from inside the 3PT line, higher than 40% from beyond and managed to turn the table upside down in ball handling: Olympiacos’ players committed 17 turnovers in Game 1 and then 22, 17 and 17 in the other 3 while Siena had 17 in Game 1 but 15, 12 and 12 in the rest of them. Although this is a very simplistic approach, subtracting the turnover numbers for games #3 and #4 gives us the magical number “5”: a very significant number of possessions for games that ended with a points difference of 9 and 12. The picture in this matchup so far? Fener had 11 turnovers in Game 1 and 12 in Game 2 and Zalgiris had 23 and…14!

Real Madrid – Panathinaikos

First two matches in Madrid were a microcosm of the greatness of this Real Madrid defence. After some playoff display, I think at this point it’s safe to say 2018-19 Real Madrid ranks up there as a historically great one. Remaning showing(s) in Athens and the rest of the playoffs will determine.

In the first match, PAO made a comeback in the battle of big lineups. Perhaps proving that fundamentally, their team is still better fit to win when the level of aggressiveness, toughness increase as refs swallow their whistles. Laso adjusted the lineup but after timeout PAO still kept their run and snatched the lead. And that shows a fundamental problem with Real at the moment. Campazzo has never been a reliable creator and he’s worse at it this season than the last. And that leaves Fabien Causeur as the only reliable creator on the team. That’s it. Laso has to use Prepelic in a role he has never played before because of it. To be honest, the minutes where Prepelic has to handle the ball is structured as him carrying the ball from a place to another mostly, rather than having actual creation responsibilities and los blancos return to their playbook entirely in those sequences. So after getting rid of the super big lineup, they still lost the lead due to their creative problems on offence.

They won that first match primarily on the other end. Monstrous clutch defensive performance, especially from Campazzo and Tavares but as a team really. PAO offence gave them a hand really, with how much stationary and predictable actions they kept running in their crunch time offence which is important to show contast with Real’s crunch time offence. While Panathinaikos kept running stationary pick and rolls against a set defence, Laso went to his sets to create movement at both sides during two-men on-ball actions or created preliminary movements to always keep PAO defenders moving throughout the possession; which assisted a lot in how many fouls Panathinaikos players kept committing down the stretch. Sending reigning champs to the foul line over and over, having to attack a set defence after. Panathinaikos needs a way better crunch time offensive plan if they want to win a close one against Real. Their defence is already incredible so they have to force their defenders to move throughout the possession or before an action. You get 24 seconds. Madrid’s defenders should have to move more than 5 seconds during a possession. Otherwise it increases the probability of them getting a stop before moving onto the offence.

The 2nd match was not different really, except Real’s defensive dominance was more spread out to the entire match and they controlled the pace brilliantly. Lulled PAO to sleep, so to speak, to a comfortable win. That’s actually a great mark of a defence that enforces a low pace. Real isn’t one of those defences that enforce the low pace but it shows this team’s and Laso’s versatility to be one in a crucial playoff battle. Lineups without Tavares were especially better in this 2nd match and so was Campazzo, putting on one of the better defensive performances from a guard in recent memory on display.

Whilst Real looks to be in control of this series, they have the aforementioned problems in terms of offensive creation which surfaced in moments at the first match. And OAKA is always super tough to play in during April. If PAO will have a chance, it will be through getting stops on defence and increasing the tempo immediately. The less they let Real to set-up their defence, the better. The more they expose Real’s creation problems, the better. Those two things go hand in hand. A game plan (and execution of it of course) similar to the first match at OAKA in their 2018 playoff match-up should be the way to go here. It won’t be easy though. Laso is in the middle of a historical run for a coach, just won the first match, perhaps when they weren’t supposed to, by outcoaching Pitino down the stretch and Real has a historically great defence.

I’m all for more great Campazzo action. Besides that, I predicted Pitino wouldn’t work out in Greece, so I’m desperate for PAO to fall in this series — although I may have already lost the battle, because the team has played very well in the second half of the season, inarguably.

The question, essentially, is a very simple one: Can PAO defend like a Final Four team? They failed to do so in the 3 of 4 times they faced Real Madrid this season – even in their home game that they were so close to win, it was mostly because Real’s horrible shooting (11/29 2FGs, 12/36 3FGs – most of which quite open) than due to PAO’s defense. The lack of reliable shooters in PAO’s backcourt prevents them from exposing Real’s backcourt problems that Uğur pointed out.

As Panathinaikos *HAS* to win Game 3 I would perhaps, with the comfort of being an Olympiacos fan watching from my couch, try to utilise Calathes with one and only clear goal: To cancel Facundo entirely out of this game. I would try some Antentokounmpo-gung-ho techniques on Causeur and whoever else (Fernandez, Prepelic) tried to run things for Real, I would give the offensive baguet to Langford and Thomas (mainly) as well as Papapetrou and Kilpatrick and would pray.

But maybe those are some of the reasons I became a software developer instead of a basketball coach? Could be.

Anadolu Efes – Barcelona

What a brilliant playoff series, this one. One team has the better roster with homecourt advantage, the other has the better coach. Both teams have a dynamic guard duo. And interestingly both Larkin and Pangos were hailed as the two of the best signings in the league at preseason. They both had up and down seasons. Both Micic and Heurtel were expected to be worse than them, both had unexpectedly good seasons. And interestingly Micic & Heurtel matched up with each other moreso than the other ones and hence Larkin & Pangos with each other; especially in the first match.

I was blown away by the sheer creation volume Micic endured in the first match. He handled it extremely well. He and Larkin attacked Tomic with super productive results but Micic also had a lot of creation responsibility aside from just attacking Tomic and beat a Barça defence that was well organised throughout the season by Pesic. On the other end, Dunston who had a very good latter half of the season, showcased a prime Dunston level of defence for his side. With such brilliant performances of their two anchors on each side of the ball, it’s no surprise that Efes came up with the win.

Biggest contrast to the first match was Dunston’s defensive regression in the 2nd match: He went from incredible to subpar. Efes continued to expose Tomic defensively but in the latter stages of the match, Pesic started to use switches and stopped the productivity of Efes offence. Efes did not respond well having to use isolations and constantly attack mismatches. They need to fix that in Barcelona because after this one, I don’t see in any way Pesic won’t use switches even more. Add to that Adam Hanga having the best individual performance of the playoffs so far and Barça tied the series. Hanga, aside from completely beasting on defence, put on a show with his passing, shooting, rebounding, hustling. Is there anything he did not do well? Going behind 0-2 would be disastrous for Barça and seeing the rush and the refusal to lose at Hanga’s body language and performance was special.

Efes is certainly more talented and the difference in roster quality surpasses the difference in coaching quality to me. Even with how much out of form Beaubois seems to be (definitely the 5th best Efes guard at the moment despite starting the season as the 2nd best) Two more matches in Barcelona. Decider, if necessary, in İstanbul. Both teams are well capable of winning away matches. So this is a close series and one interesting wrinkle to watch is the durability of Efes players. The ones that play those heavy minutes anyway. Moerman especially barely come out of the game so far but it’s not just him, Efes has 4 players at the top of combined minutes among all players in the playoffs after 2 matches before any non-Efes player.

Efes bigs will continue to outplay Barça bigs. Barça wings will continue to outplay Efes bigs with a bigger margin. So battle of the guards is very crucial to this one, will Barça guards be able to match or just only slightly outplayed by Efes guards? Or will Efes guards meaningfully outplay Barça guards? This question is quite crucial to the rest of the series.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Barcelona ends this series at home. That’s it, nothing else from me on this one.

CSKA Moscow – Baskonia

Water is wet, more talent usually beats less talent. Baskonia hung around for a half until CSKA talent, depth, and even luck (that 3-point shooting was astronomically high at 13/23) took over. This pass happened:

It seems like CSKA Moscow is always destined to have at least one of their key players disappear per playoff game. In the beating the club took against Baskonia, it was De Colo. In CSKA’s G1 destruction of Baskonia, it was Kyle Hines. But everyone else was so good in that one that it didn’t matter. I’m guessing it’s Chacho’s turn to underperform in G3.

Isn’t it about time for CSKA Moscow to spare us a pathetic Final Four appearance? I think so. Can you think of a better team to make that happen than Final Four hosts Baskonia? I don’t think so.

This is definitely a defensive-hustle demonstration of the highest European level but fool yourselves not, the Basque side needs some offensive power to propel their way to the two very valuable wins they are after: These two teams have faced each other four time this season and Baskonia has scored 78, 78 and 76 points in the three games that were close and just 68 in the blow out loss of Playoffs Game 1 (having, however, 40 points at halftime of that game (when they were trailing just by 4)).

Rebounding proved to be a major element in the first half of Game 2 as Baskonia outperformed CSKA by 20% in defensive rebounding in Q1 and in offensive rebounding in Q2. That’s how you want hustling to translate come playoffs time.