IN THE GAME

It’s one of the top Final Fours ever.

CSKA headcoach Ettore Messina

They say that this Final Four will be the best we’ve seen in the last few years, and it is certain that the level of all four teams is very high, something that the players must show in the court.

Olympiacos headcoach Panagiotis Giannakis

Everyone is already saying, before it starts, that it’s probably the best Final Four ever.

Panathinaikos headcoach Zeljko Obradovic

The expectations are high for this year’s Final Four, which features three teams that many considered a lock for Berlin, and another one [Barcelona] that had made key offseason acquisitions and was expected to be one of three, four candidates for the fourth spot. The four participants also feature the four biggest budgets in the competition. “Great players and big budgets don’t always mean you know how to use them correctly. So it’s a great accomplishment for each team [to be here]” was what coach Messina said in an interview for Euroleague.net. Obviously, they do have the know-how.

That doesn’t mean everything went as planned. Olympiacos record signing Josh Childress has been a disappointment so far this season, at least for those who expected him to deliver an MVP type of season. The same can be said for late acquisition Jannero Pargo, who was only 1 for 5 from the field during the whole quarter final series against Real Madrid. Panathinaikos’ Drew Nicholas could not get going until midway through the season, Zoran Planinic and Terence Morris – expensive transfers each one of them – are having up and down seasons. As a consequence of the Euroleague format, single games in Top16 sometimes decide between success and failure. When Olympiacos traveled to Vitoria-Gasteiz for their Euroelague Top16 game, a loss would have brought a quarter final matchup with FC Barcelona, with homecourt advantage to the Catalans. In fact, there are more than a handful of teams that consider a season without Final Four participation a failure.

The way to success can be taken on different paths, and the four participants may be similar in certain aspects, but not in all of them. After a little player by player preview on Tuesday, I will take a look at playing styles and selected statistics that support our impressions about how teams operate on the floor.

1. Pace and offensive efficiency
Pace is not a good or bad criteria. The fast-paced Maccabi Tel Aviv dominated the middle of this decade by pushing the ball up the floor and not hesitating to let if fly early on the shotclock. Since then, the slower teams – CSKA and Panathinaikos -  have been shaping the picture of the Euroleague.

Statistics support our impression that CSKA is one of the slower teams in the competition, in fact, by far the slowest. The team averages 64.9 possessions a game, 11.6 less than category leader TAU Vitoria, and 5.5 less than the nearest Final Four participant, Barcelona. Barcelona is known as a team that likes to push the ball and even take shots early on the shotclock, so their position at 17 might be surprising. However, their ability to defend well and force the opponent into using much of the 24 seconds to find a solution might play a part in their rather average number of possessions. Panathinaikos has been rather slow-paced under Obradovic traditionally, but the old master has urged his team to push the ball more and more during the last couple of seasons. Olympiacos was the team most people were unsure about prior to this season, when coach Giannakis, who had led Greece to success by playing very [and that might still be an understatement] defensive-minded basketball, signed several players that do not stand for halfcourt defense. The result has been the fourth fastest offense among Top16 participants, according to the statistics. And in this case, I would consider the statistics a good tool for evaluation.

Game pace is what makes the points per game statistic misleading. By looking at this statistical category, one might think that all of the slower paced teams are average to bad teams on the offensive end, but that is far from the truth. CSKA is 11th among all Euroleague teams at only a little more than 75 points per game, yet the points per possession category ranks them as the 2nd most efficient offense in the league, second only to TAU. Offense wins games, defense wins championships is a frequently used term, but with all four Final Four participants ranking among the top five in points per possession, it is already a lock that while defense of course plays a large part, one of the offensively most efficient teams will win the title. Taking a look at assists per possession [the four Final Four participants all rank top four] further solidifies the perception that executing an efficient team offense is key to success in the Euroleague.

2. More characteristics
As you might expect after our first look at team offense statistics, the four participants all rank top five in true shooting percentage, a statistical tool which takes under consideration the fact that a made three point shot is worth more than a two-pointer. However, settling for a lot of outside jumpers is not going to bring you anywhere on any basketball level, and the statistics tell us that all four participants have a healthy three-pointers to overall field goal attempts ratio [see 3PA/FGA in Image II]. Neither of the four teams is shooting less than 36 percent from beyond the arc, and while Panathinaikos’ ratio set in relation to the shooting percentages is the worst among the Berlin participants, one must say that they have been getting good looks all season long, but haven’t been able to make them to a satisfying percentage for a large parts of the season. However, when Drew Nicholas is on fire as he has been all throughout Top16 and the playoffs, and when the inconsistent Antonis Fotsis is making the outside shot, the team is incredibly hard to stop. Olympiacos is fourth to last in three-pointers to overall field goal attempts ratio and fourth to top in free throws to overall field goal attempts ratio, distinguishing the Greek powerhouse as a team that likes to take the ball to the basket. And while that sounds all positive, it was obvious throughout the regular season that Papaloukas’ [he started to shoot very well later in the season] and Childress’ lack of outside shooting qualities provided spacing problems for coach Giannakis’ team. Barcelona and CSKA do not shoot the three-pointer too frequently, but they rely a lot on the midrange jumpshot [especially by their big men], and not being able to attack the basket aggressively has been one of the few negatives for both teams. However, when the jumpshots are falling, both teams are incredibly hard to stop due to excellent offensive execution.

3. Team balance
One of the key developments in European basketball in this decade has been the installation of huge, balanced rosters, that enable playing a high intensity for 40 minutes. As I had posted some time ago, minutes per game usually do not pass the 30 minute mark on top teams, but gather around 20 instead. Even key players such as Nikola Pekovic and Sarunas Jasikevicius average less than 20 minutes a game. However, there are exceptions on almost any team, key players that cannot be missed out on on either offense, defense, or both.

The CSKA trio of JR Holden, Trajan Langdon and Ramunas Siskauskas is leading the minutes per game ranking among Final Four participants, and Messina surely isn’t too happy about it. Most of it is due to the struggles of their colleagues, mainly the offseason acquisitions Planinic and Morris, but also the average performances of Nikolaos Zisis, in his second year with CSKA, and Matjaz Smodis [SF/PF Khryapa had to help on PF a lot], one of the team leaders. The backcourt duo of Diamantidis and Spanoulis leads Panathinaikos in minutes, while not a single Olympiacos member passes the 25 minutes mark. That leaves us with the case of Juan Carlos Navarro, the dominating figure on this year’s FC Barcelona roster. Navarro not only leads the club by a mile in minutes per game [27:50, while Gianluca Basile comes next at 23:03], his outstanding role on that teams also shows in other statistical categories such as points per team points [%PT] and field goal attempts per team field goal attempts [%FGA]. League leader in points per team points, by the way, is Prokom’s David Logan. While the other teams all show a healthy balance [Erazem Lorbek is by no means a one man show, most of his points come off assists, at least according to my observation] the Catalans rely a lot on what Navarro creates for himself and his teammates. Along 14.8 points, he is averaging 3.7 assists per game. Panathinaikos’ center duo contributes an accumulated 32 points per team points, but most of it arrives through the team’s deadly pick and roll play. In fact, the backcourt creates a large part of Panathinaikos’ offense.

To conclude, Navarro’s play will determine success or defeat for Barcelona. The stoppers Diamantidis, Spanoulis, Vassilopoulos, Holden and Langdon are already waiting. As a team, not being able to get to the charity stripe might prove costly when the pick and pop guys’ shots are off. Three point shooting is a major point for Panathinaikos. If the off-ball players manage to hit their shots to a solid ratio, the team is almost impossible to stop due to their deadly PG-C axis in pick and roll play, which demands a lot of attention. If they don’t, the team still has a lot of weapons. Messina will have to make sure his CSKA roster doesn’t fall in love too much with the midrange and and three point game, which they are incredibly good at of course. Olympiacos will try to push the ball and attack the basket.

4. Rebounds
Alongside rebound difference, a solid tool to measure rebounding is the relation of team rebounds to missed shots [own rebounds plus opponent's rebounds] on both ends of the floor. In fact, it is a lot more accurate than rebounds per game, which again does not take into account game pace.

Barcelona is winning the rebounding battle by a 3.67 margin per game, only 0.04 more than CSKA. The Catalans do an exceptionally good job on defensive rebounding, allowing only 27.9 percent [in relation to all missed shots by the opponent] offensive rebounding for the opposing team. CSKA and Olympiacos are doing solid work on the boards as well. The Russians just put aside Partizan in the quarter finals, the leading rebounding team over the course of the season, by playing huge defense and winning the rebounding battle by a large margin. This is, after all, what coach Messina thinks will make CSKA strong in this year’s Final Four: “It is a real big thing to go to the Final Four. There we play our game – defense and rebounding.” [Quoted after the series clinching Game 3 quarter final victory]

Panathinaikos meanwhile has been struggling with rebounding all year long and especially in the quarter finals against Montepaschi, whose long shooting produced long rebounds and hurt the Greek team considerably throughout the series. They got control of the boards for one game – Game 3, which they completely dominated.

Check back soon for a look at the participants’ current form and semifinal matchups.

Statistics are courtesy of Euroleague.net. The advanced statistics belong to the Draftexpress statistical database, which is defenitely worth for everyone to take a look at.