Topic: 23/24 European basketball discussion: Euroleague/BBL/ACB/LegaA/LNB/TBL.. - page 8. (Read 4568 times)

Well, it all went as expected actually. 
Pana with the win at home and 2 close away wins for slight underdogs in away games. Even made a parley with these 3 games for combined odds of 5.5 . Too bad though I only wagered 10$, haha.

Anyway, we have our final 4. Refreshing to see 2 Greek team among them, must have been a while since that happened.
Panathinaikos and Olympiakos really had a good season so far, quite of a comeback for Pana after the struggles in recent seasons.
Real Madrid will still be the favourite for the final 4 but in this lineup of teams it is super close in my opinion. Every single team can make a case for themselves to win this year's Euroleague.
Looking forward for the last 4 games to find out who ends up on top this season!

Congrats!
Olympiakos' match was also very tough. They had to make a turnaround against their opponent but eventually managed to successfully pull it off. It's interesting now that two Greek teams could eventually end up playing against each other in the EuroLeague final. I can't wait for the semifinals. I'll watch both of them if I can as a Greek. Very exciting time to be watching basketball as someone from my country this year. It's been a very long time since we had this level of success.

The following matches will certainly be very exciting!

Thank you.    We have really capable players in our roster which always makes me hopeful to come back. I must admit that Šarūnas Jasikevičius was also doing his best today. He was always shouting at the players about what they should do to keep our hopes alive. When it comes to Mike James I agree with you. He is really a quality player at the Euroleague level. Tonight he was the best of his team with 20 points.

To be honest I wasn't expecting Barcelona to lose in front of their supporters. Their not reaching Final Four is a surprise to me.

Congrats, mate! What a game. Similar like in yesterday's game I think that both teams is worth to play in Final 4, but someone have to lose and winner was decided in small details.
As said few posts above, I had a feeling that Fenerbahche can become first team to win Game 5 away. And damn, Calathes, such clutch play, especially missing many 3-pointers before. Now I just feel sad for Mike James. One of best Euroleague players is still without trophy and at his age, nobody knows how many chances he will have.

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Barca - Olympiacos, another game of equal teams. Another very low scoring, defensive game, but damn, how Barca collapsed in the end of 4th quarter...

We made it! It was a really tough match for us though. We could have finished this without OT actually. Wilbekin used that chance really poorly. But in the last moments of OT, Calathes took a big responsibility and single-handedly brought the win to us.    First a 3-pointer and later a critical steal by him. Now we are going to Final Four and our next opponent is Panathinaikos. There is a familiar name there who is their coach Ergin Ataman. 



By the way there is an interesting statistics. Fenerbahçe have become the first team to win away in Game 5 and reach Final Four by this way in the current system.

Panathinaikos returns to Final 4 after 12 years. You shouldn't expect beautiful basketball in such kind of games and as expected it was defensive game. But what we saw in 4th quarter, Panathinaikos completely locked Maccabi, they even struggled to make normal attack. Great series, respect to Maccabi, but someone has to lose there. And after game in OAKA it looked that Panathinaikos already won Euroleague already.

I'm watching the Panathinaikos vs. Maccabi Tel Aviv game now and it's almost intolerable how much each team utilizes strategic fauls to gain an advantage. We're at the fourth quarter now and I'm sure we could have easily been eyeing a 100 each match game if the teams weren't playing in such a technical way.

Thankfully seems like Panathinaikos is just a little better at forcing their opponent make hasty decisions and take rebounds from them. But the big contradiction here is that while both teams have been utilizing technical fauls, neither is performing well in free throws.

Odds were heavily favoring panathinaikos even at the time both teams had the same score. Now in the fourth quarter Panathinaikos is leading by 8 points, which is a nice turnaround for Panathinaikos. Let's see if they keep it that way.

The current odds for Game 5 are like above. Bookmakers give Monaco a bigger chance after they captured the court advantage. But I also believe that we have a good chance to win the last match to qualify for Final Four. We beat Monaco away once in the series. It is quite possible to do it again. Defensive game didn't work in the previous match. Sarunas Jasikevicius is a really good coach and I believe in his tactical choices in this critical game to bring the win. 

Yeah, I am thinking the same actually.
I believe that Fener as wells as Olympiakos have legitimate chances to win game 5 away from home. Olympiakos dominated Barca in game 3 and they have the full momentum. Sure, Barcelona is playing at home and especially in the EL it's difficult to win away games, but for some reason I think these 2 teams might do it.

If you think that Pana is a 50/50 game you should bet it, you would get great value because Pana odds are really low. Betting Maccabi should have total value then. 

Interesting face that so far in Euroleague history there was 19 Game 5 andso far all decisive games were won by home teams. Now I have feeling that new history will be written. And if I have to guess, I think that Fenerbahche will make it against Monaco.
Tonight we have Panathinaikos - Maccabi, for me it's 50/50 game completely, not going to predict it. BTW, great thing that all 3 games will be played on different time.

Well that's nothing new in a late games in a series situations, you also see that in the NBA in game 7 situations. When the pressure is on both teams it's hard to make baskets, that's why they day defense wins championships.

I somehow still think Fener with prevail though, even though the final game of the series will take place in Monaco again.

Didnt expect such a low scoring match also didnt think that Fenerbahce would drop a win at home and now another match goes into game 5 and this is what we like about basketball. Both teams missed o most everything and barely were able to score. Mike James didnt play good at all but got that clutch 3 in the end. Turkish fans continue to make stupid decisions and cause problems in football and now in basketball.

This is unacceptable behavior by that Monaco player. If he didn't provoke the fans there wouldn't be any problem at the end of the match. When it comes to the match I wasn't expecting us to play this defensive. While we had the court advantage in our hands we should have taken advantage of it with a dominant game.  

Guduric's 3-pointer in the last moments revived our hopes. But we couldn't prevent the last 2 points by Monaco. We should have been able to go for a foul there.

Of course there is no justification about fans attacking the players no matter what. It was just a barbaric act. Monaco's defence was exceptionally good. Psychological superiority is now with Monaco. Fenerbahce are losing games where they don't have high three-point percentage. They are playing with a narrow rotation. The thing is Calathes was great for the whole series about defending Mike James. James' FG percentage is quite low. I wonder what he will do in the next game.

Another series reached Game 5 Tonight we saw another great playoff game. It was very low scoring game, but that's true beauty of playoffs. Such defensive game is something what Fenerbahche preferred, but Monaco won even without playing their typical basketball.
Sad that such great game was ruined by accident in the end. Fenerbahche fans attacked Monaco players. It wasn't  shown on TV what exactly happened, but it looks that Monaco players aren't saint too as they allegedly provoked fans.
https://twitter.com/BasketNews_com/status/1786482732433920144

Fenerbahce Beko had a great performance against Monaco in the last game and did a great job both on offense and defense. With these results, Fenerbahce is now 2-1 in Game 3 of the series. Fenerbahce is the closest team to the Final-Four with Game 4 to be played today.

Guduric's expected contribution to the team, Calathes good play throughout the series, Biberovic and Wilbekin's shooting contributions at critical moments were the factors that led to the win. The Yellow Navy team is the favorite in this match with a huge fan support on its home court. The advantage of being in front, the support of the fans, the pressure on the opponent and the success in the last three games will make Monaco's guard drop. Fenerbahce will have the upper hand especially in the first half and will win the game. Thus, they will welcome back the Final-Four after a five year hiatus.

Barca really was a disgrace after the 1st quarter.
I mean really, just scoring 35 points in 30 minutes after scoring 23 in the first 10min is beyond crazy. The stats for this game also are quite crazy. You would think the winning team get way more shots off, or more free throws, or less turnovers, but no.
They both shot 65 shots and Olympiakos even had 1 more turnover in this game, AND 6 less free throws .

The stat of the game though for me the the free throw % by Barcelona, shooting 7/17, hahaha.
If you can't even make these how do you want to be competitive.

Now it's a deciding game 5 in Barcelona, guess it's an even matchup for this on.

That hardcore win by Olympiacos is just huge and now anything can happen in game 5 and their confidence must be huge after this heavy win. Panathiankos same with game 5 and i think they will win at home and go to the final 4. While the Oly vs Bar match anything can happen. This season we have some intresting matchups in the playoffs and cant wait to see the results of the game 5

Wow, it's unexpected that Olympiacos destroyed Barcelona so easy when previous games were so close. 17-0 run in 1st half decided game and it looked that Barca gave up early, already thinking about Game 5.
We will have game 5 between Panathinaikos and Maccabi too. In 4th quarter there was moment when it looked that Maccabi controls the game and will win this series. But in the end, PAO took control over and won the game.
Euroleague playoffs couldn't be better than this. Now we only need Game 5 between Monaco and Fenerbahche.

I don't want to believe in similar conspiracy theories. And AFAIK, money from TV rights doesn't belongs on how many games they play, they have fixed contracts

I had a discussion with a colleague the other day about Euroleague and how uneventful it is. Let me explain...
He claimed that since it's a closed league, it's in their interest to participate in some minor match fixing so they earn more from tv rights and licenses. For example, with matches at this stage running at a best of three, if any team was to win within the first three matches, it would have left the last two matches never played with their opponent already knocked out.

So, at the stage where matches are a best of three, we see teams go head to head with each other and appear to win just barely enough so it seems believable that they might lose next match. This is a very different story to what we normally see on competitive leagues that aren't seeded from a closed list like Euroleague is. Do you think this accusation makes sense?

Of course this isn't the outright match fixing like we see it in football where teams can also determine the exact score, but rather only who wins certain matches. The rest of the league might very well be legit because certain matches in a best of three don't make a difference, they can just decide who wins/loses for two matches based on the first two and still keep the rest competitive. Maybe it's true but will we ever really know.