sport
basketball
Euroleague and European basketball
Ahrela Weisberg
Behind the Scenes
Exponential League: The bizarre effects of the Corona on the Euroleague
The teams completely lost the home advantage.
80-point displays have become a rare commodity.
The Europeans eliminated the Americans from the MVP race.
And what happened to the luxury clubs that took care to maintain continuity?
The table does not lie, but suffers from the symptoms of the virus
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Maccabi Tel Aviv in basketball
Euroleague
Ahrela Weisberg
Thursday, October 22, 2020, 12:30 p.m.
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The saddest, and perhaps also the most significant, figure recorded so far in the Euroleague is this: only 17,541 spectators were eligible to attend the games on the main stage of European basketball.
On a regular basis, they would not even have been able to fill the Ouaka in Athens - but in the reality imposed by the Corona, those fans were scattered between nine games in six different halls, over four rounds.
55 games took place behind closed doors.
Many strange phenomena brought with it the plague into our lives, and its effect is evident in all areas.
The Euroleague, like any other league in the world, is also experiencing countless unconventional events;
The most disturbing point concerns the exponentially growing cancellations of games: if in all two opening rounds all the games took place in order, then in each of the two double week rounds two games were canceled, and this weekend three-thirds of the games in the original board will be postponed.
Here are some of the imaginary scenarios that have become realistic in the last three weeks.
Not everyone is directly related to Corona, but some are certainly affected by it, at least indirectly.
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To the full article
Euroleague behind closed doors.
This is what is left (Photo: Ahrela Weisberg)
1. Homelessness is lost
In the absence of fans in the stands, many of the teams lose their most significant and substantial advantage in home games.
It's not just a matter of decibels;
It is difficult for many of the players, at least at this stage of adapting to the situation, to extract from themselves the energies and adrenaline that were their lot on normal days - and the results are noticeable on the board.
In fact, in the 32 games played so far, the advantage for the host teams has been completely eliminated - and the spoils are divided equally between the guests and the locals: 16 home wins versus 16 away wins.
By comparison, in the first four rounds of last season, the home team held a clear advantage and won 69 percent of the games (11:25).
2. Falling stars
It's not just the energies from the stands that players are missing on the floor, and devouring the cards.
Much has been said and written about the poor preparation that Maccabi Tel Aviv had to go through when it opened its training at a late stage and could not hold preparatory games against rivals from abroad, but there is an important statistic concerning the other teams.
Most Euroleague players recently returned to action after more than six months. Since the first wave of the Corona has halted activity all over the sporting world. Beyond the damage to the quality of the staff, following cases of adhesions that caused missing lineups, this rust can be illustrated on the shooting displays: in the 32 games so far, only 17 teams have scored 80 points or more without Overtime (only 26 percent of cases) In the first four rounds of last season, 30 teams reached 80 or more (41 percent of games).
Hard without you: no points, no Americans, no zero.
Shane Larkin (Photo: GettyImages)
3. Shift change (temporary?)
One of the oldest clichés in the world of sports is that "the table does not lie", but in the 2020/21 season it provides rather strange answers and it is evident that it suffers from corona symptoms.
Anadolu Zero and Real Madrid, who dominated the factory last season, made minimal changes to their staffs (if any).
Zero does appear without the big star Shane Larkin so far, but its other players are also far from their familiar fitness from last year - while Real manage to take advantage of the rejection in the NBA to keep, at least temporarily, Pekondo Campasso.
Still, they both suffer from a shocking start and are on a 3: 1 balance (similar to Maccabi Tel Aviv and Alba in Berlin) in 16-13 places.
If last season there was no situation at all where they both lost in the same round, then this season it has already happened three times.
The Euroleague table provides a mirror image not only in the Real and Zero segment: the top three are teams that changed coaches in the summer, and above all stands out the leader Zalgiris Kaunas, who lost Sharonas Jasikevicius and is the only one holding a 0: 4 balance.
In contrast, the last five of the last six have retained a coach from last season.
The Serb from Munich leaves dust for all American foreigners.
Vladimir Lucic (Photo: Danny Maron)
4. The Europa League
1. Vladimir Lučić, Serb, 22.8
-.
Nando de Colo, French, 22.8
-.
Krono Simone, Croatian, 22.8
4. Slava Zaitsev, Russian, 20.5
5. Rokas Gedraitis, Lithuanian, 20.3
Top of the efficiency table presents an unusual picture: the top five are European players;
The only American in the top eight is Will Claiborne of CSKA Moscow (sixth place). In
the King of the Baskets table, by the way, the picture is the opposite. Wilbkin is fifth, with only Gedraitis in fourth place.
Signs of optimism and change are already emerging below the surface.
Aside from the return of Alexei Sheved this coming weekend, and anticipation of Larkin's return next week, it looks like the players are also starting to remove rust slowly.
Here is a concrete example of this: in the first round there were only four that managed to issue at least 25 index views;
In the second cycle there were five such;
Last week their number jumped to 20 (eight in round 3 and no less than 12 in round 4).
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