A few words about the embarrassing game of F.C. Barcelona

The result of the last night Euroleague encounter between F.C. Barcelona and CSKA Moscow shocked the entire basketball world. Is one of the worst games played at home by a title contender in the modern era. Especially when CSKA was not counting on Kostas Koufos and Ron Baker (who entered under 2 minutes).

What is really impressive for the Russian side is that no player scored more than 14 points (Mike James) even if the entire squad almost reached 100 points. The rotation showed the fact that great teams and great coaches rely on the contributions of all their players in order to win. Imagine a team where 8 players can finish the game in double-digit or almost because Hackett scored only 9 and Vorontsevich – 8 points. The power of the collective game was proved once again by Itoudis as the main factor to steal victories against all odds.

On the other side, the host team, F.C. Barcelona had a nightmarish percentage from the 3 point line, finishing with only 2/18 for a poor 11%. And those 2 shots scored from the arc belongs to Nikola Mirotic, so no other Barcelona’s player could hit a three the whole game! In fact, the Blaugrana team was inferior at all the categories compared with the visitors. CSKA was better at 2 points range, at 3 points by far, reaching almost 50% (14/30), free-throws, rebounds and assists which leads to a huge gap at the final index rate: 116-63. The efficiency of the Red Army was almost double than the opponents.

F.C. Barcelona played such a poor game with no inspiration, no energy and no solutions all the 40 minutes they spent on the court. The best image of the disaster is the “performance” of Ante Tomic, five-starter this time for Pesic who finished with 0/4 FG, adding 0 rebounds, 3 turnovers and 3 fouls committed and 0 received for a -10 index rate.

Every team has poor games from time to time and it remains to be seen if F.C. Barcelona can find the right mentality to enter the Final 4 and why not to win it. Let’s say it was just a bad game, but chemistry and coordination have to be improved, especially because the roster has all the necessary potential for this.

Photo: Euroleague.net

Gratian Cormos

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