I’ve got a ton of free time on my hands right about now, and I decided to use some of it to watch a couple of this week’s games in their entirety. With some assistance from my friends over at Insidehoops.com I was able to find quality streams with english commentary, and while it wasn’t the NBA on a flat screen, it was damn nice to see some professional-quality basketball. I’ll begin by recapping the two games I watched, but before I begin I would just like to clarify something: I don’t include all games in my Euroleague/CBA recaps. I only include the games where current or former NBA players do something of note. For more detailed stats and recaps of all Euroleague games, visit their website.
KK Zagreb 80, Zalgiris Kaunas 78: On Wednesday, Sonny Weems, Ty Lawson and company (Zalgiris) travelled to Croatia to play then-winless Zagreb. They’re not winless anymore. My main man Sonny Weems, who was averaging 20 PPG in Euroleague competition, laid a serious egg in the two-point loss. He played alright early on, but he simply couldn’t get the open shots to fall. He appeared to get a little frustrated as he forced a few bad shots before completely disappearing. He finished up with 5 points on 6 shots, and did nothing but throw the game-sealing turnover down the stretch. Ty Lawson had 4 points and 2 helpers on five shots. He played 16 minutes, but he was pretty much invisible out there. He didn’t even look like the same player that suits up for the Nuggets… no pushing of the ball, driving to the rack, catch-and-shoot triples… nothin’. He appeared to be simply going through the motions for the majority of his time on the floor. The guy who single-handedly kept Zalgiris in the game was Paulius Jankunus. This dude only averages 7/5 in Euroleague competition, but he exploded for 24 points and 9 OFFENSIVE boards. A couple of defensive rebounds made it a double-double. Extremely impressive effort from that young man, but he was pretty much the entire Zalgiris attack. One of their other bigs–I think his name was Rakovic–moved well without the ball and put in some work as they briefly appeared to be getting their sh!t together in the early part of the second half, and a native Croation by the name of Marko Popovic knocked down three triples, but the NBAers simply did not deliver.
For Zagreb, former NBAers Sean May and Mario Kasun (their leading scorer) were more impactful than their Zalgiris counterparts, but they didn’t lead the attack. It was Krunoslav Simon who played some agressive ball and scored a team-high 22 points. Kasun did make five of eight shots and probably would’ve been more productive had he not been in some foul trouble.
Although I was disappointed by Sonny’s individual performance, this was a pretty exciting game. It went down to the wire and some of the European players for each team really impressed me.
Real Madrid 104, Anadolo Efes 84: This game was far more exciting than the 20-point differential indicates. First of all, on Euroleague standards, this was a high-scoring game. To give any of my unfamiliar readers a little perspective, this was the only week five game (out of 12 total) in which a team topped 100. Hell, only two teams reached 90. This was a European shoot-out, and it was a dandy. Efes tried to press Madrid for much of the contest, but with little success. Sergio “Spanish Chocolate” Rodriguez took care of the basketball and played an excellent game (10 assists to 2 TOs, 5 points on 2-3). He and another energetic guard named Sergio Llull did an excellent job of breaking the press and getting the team into their offense. The ball was moving all game long and sharpshooters Rudy Fernandez and Jaycee Carroll capitalized to the tune of seven triples on 50%. Carroll was absolutely on fire early on (19 points), and Fernandez closed out the game with back-to-back long balls and one of his two alley-oop slams. Efes was actually making a run late… they had the Madrid lead cut down to seven at one point… but Fernandez was the guy who really took over and put it out of reach.
For Efes, Ersan Ilyasova was quiet for much of the game, but the majority of his 14 points came during that aforementioned run. Sasha Vujacic flopped a lot while contributing next to nothing. No Efes player really had an exceptional individual showing. I thought Madrid out hustled them, too. That dude Llull was all over the court, diving for loose balls and everything.
Very entertaining game to watch. I enjoyed it at least as much as the two-point game between Zalgiris and Zagreb.
CSKA Moscow 77, Unicaja 66: Andrei Kirilenko earned himself his second weekly MVP by leading CSKA to an 11-point win with his 17 points (on THREE shots), 9 boards, 2 assists, 6 steals, and 3 blocks. AK47 has been a force throughout the season… he’s Euroleague’s leader in both rebounding and ranking (a simple mathematical formula that essentially adds up everything you did correctly and then subtracts everything you did wrong). Fellow NBAer Nenad Krstic pitched in with 12 points.
Fenerbahce Ulker 85, Bennet Cantu 83: Thabo Sefolosha was Fenerbahce’s second-leading scorer in this nail biter. His 14 points and 7 boards on 5-9 included a key tip in during the extra period. Check out the highlights; some dude gets mashed on…
Olympiacos 91, SLUC Nancy 78: Last week’s MVP Nicolas Batum scored just 9 points on 8 shots as he turned the ball over 3 times in a losing effort. Batum has played some superb ball this season, so this was a surprisingly poor performance by the young man. Vassilis Spanoulis did 26/6 for Olympiacos. He had 9 TOs, though.
FC Barcelona 70, GS Medical Park 66: After scoring 12 points in this one, Barcelona’s Juan Carlos Navarro needs just 13 more points to become Euroleague’s all-time leading scorer. The league was founded in 2000, and former Murray State shooting guard Marcus Brown is the current scoring leader.
Montepaschi Siena 84, Asseco Prokom 73: It came in a losing effort, but seven-foot first-round NBA draftee Donatas Motiejunas’s line of 26/9 on 10-16 strikes me as rather impressive… especially because four of his baskets were threes. I’m not gonna sit here and act like I know anything about this kid other than that he’s seven feet tall, was born in 1990, and can apparently shoot from range… but based on that alone Houston Rockets fans should feel pretty excited.
Partizan 69, Emporio Armani 65: I’ve got no details, but I read that the guard half of Partizan’s two-headed NBA monster, Acie Law/Nikola Pekovic, got hurt in this game. No matter, Pekovic led them to victory with his 15 points and 6 boards. The Rooster dropped 14 for Armani, but he clunked 6 of 9 shots.
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