Worst finishers: Baskonia and Velimir Perasovic
In the yesterday game Baskonia proved that they can almost make it. Despite their injured players, Toko Shengelia and Jayson Granger, the team made a huge effort to lead Olympiacos en Piraeus. But again they missed the finish.
With 27 seconds remaining Baskonia had 4 points advantage. There were a couple of free-throws exchanged by both teams and then, with 13 seconds left, the Greeks had the possession and they had to cut the 3 points deficit in order to force overtime. Which they did, with a miraculous shot from the arc made by Kostas Papanikolaou with 3 seconds remaining.
This was a childish mistake of the coach Velimir Perasovic who didn’t tell his players to commit a strategical foul in the last seconds of the 4th quarter, offering just 2 free-throws to Olympiacos. The score would have been 80-79 for Baskonia and a new possession for them, which have been forced the Reds to put them again at the free-throw line. This is what you have to do in this situation: you commit foul, in order to protect your team to not receive a killing 3 point shot. Every coach knows it, this is not a secret.
Benefiting from Baskonia’s lack of intelligence, Olympiacos tied the game, enter overtime and eventually won the battle. It doesn’t matter if you lead the game for 39 minutes and 57 seconds. Weak teams fail in the end.
Angel Jimenez, info@brainbasketball.net
