(sJacas) Friendly bounce here, free throw miss, foot on the line or questionable no-call there. Close basketball games are joyous celebrations of random incidents.

The final result means everything and nothing. It may decide upon season success or failure. But it cannot alter a performance that has already been delivered.

Similar to how he applauds the creation of a rational, high-percentage shot regardless of its outcome, Dusan Ivkovic must have felt deep satisfaction just for earning the opportunity to beat this CSKA Moscow team, one of the most devastating rosters European club basketball has ever seen, consisting of almost the entire Russian national team including its very elite players and enhanced with the two absolute cornerstones of the Serbian selection, plus an aging-like-wine Lithuanian all-decade-calibre forward. Having soundly defeated Montepaschi in the quarters, deservedly edged eighteen-and-one-Barca in the semis and now sensationally rallying in the final to push CSKA to one last, decisive possession, Olympiakos, Ivkovic, crew and players had already performed a truly phenomenal job.

Maybe that is why the old fox watches on in fascinating calmness as the players in red and white bounce around in joy: As Spanoulis begins his final charge upcourt, Ivkovic’s work has long been done. Everything that follows is left to Spanoulis’ decision-making, a bunch of subconscious decisions by CSKA defenders, Printezis’ intuition and muscle-memory, plus a decent portion of coincidence in its purest form, fresh from the garden.

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You cannot accuse Jonas Kazlauskas of not trying.

CSKA came into Friday’s semifinal against Panathinaikos shockingly unprepared for what everyone in the building knew was going to come: A pick and roll orgy of the highest quality, orchestrated by a couple of all-decade playmakers.

Aleks Maric charged unharmed down the alley for six of the game’s first eight points, followed by four from Batiste, all direct pick and roll products. Ordered or not by Kazlauskas, CSKA then moved the weakside corner defender further inside to deny Batiste a free path to the rim. Diamantidis and Jasikevicius greeted such friendly maneuver with a bunch of pinpoint-crosscourt passes and hockey assists for open corner triples. Only then, at 7-19 midway through the first quarter, was an effective defensive mechanism set in place, where the power forward blocked the roll man’s path to the rim and then continued to rotate towards the weakside corner. The move immedeately rendered Panathinaikos power forwards key halfcourt decision makers. Zeljko Obradovic reacted by moving the four to the wing and Diamantidis to the extended free throw line position. The chess game was already on its way.

Unsurprisingly, it was Shved’s and Kirilenko’s out-of-set creativity that brought the Russians back on level terms against a team that had prepared for every halfcourt move in perfection. With the defense finally getting the stops needed to trigger its devastating transition offense, Shved raced down the court for a nifty layup, Kirilenko stole a naive pass from Batiste for the and one and came back to hit a transition triple for the game’s first tie a couple of minutes later. A halftime free throw margin of eighteen to three may have helped, too.

In a key second-half move, the CSKA-defense then switched on every Diamantidis pick and roll. The Panathinaikos playmaker missed four three pointers in isolation versus Krstic/Kaun, setting up a wild finish where Teodosic missed two foul shots before Diamantidis, bothered by the long Kirilenko’s defense, swung too low a pass into Kaimakoglou’s direction on the final possession – game, set, match.

One footnote will understandably get lost in the euphoria around Olympiakos’ upsetting win in Istanbul: Panathinaikos, itself subject of not insignificant roster downgrading last summer, prepared and executed phenomenally well and could easily have won this game behind a fascinating all-around showing from Kaimakoglou (ten points, eight boards, five assists) and a typically inspirational Final Four performance from Jasikevicius. Think about this: with less than two minutes left and CSKA down four, Alexey Shved launches an off-balance midrange shot that bounces a good half meter vertically off the rim, then drops in. Randomness, here we come again.

Even if nobody wants to hear it: If this is the end of the Obradovic & Panathinaikos Euroleague era, it is – despite the result – a very worthy one.

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Friday’s nine o’clock tip off was not expected to bring the house down. Barca, arriving with the most effective defense in modern Euroleague history, prefers the slow, methodical halfcourt style; Transition defense over everything else, hence sufficient backcourt protection on every launch from beyond the arc, every move schemed to the max. Very few (fans, players) find satisfaction in that, but hey, if it works? The problem is, on Friday it did not.

Xavi Pascual pondered the missed three point shots afterwards, and he does so with good reason: The three point shot fluctuates more than any other shot in basketball; You may create one of the best looks out there – a wide open catch and shoot opportunity from the corner, practiced, automized in tenths of thousands of attempts – and it will still miss more often than not. It may even miss eight times in a row, there’s simply nothing you can do about it.

Good teams have other high-percentage options on hand, and that is where Barca fell short. Erazem Lorbek had four post up possessions: On three, he scored, the fourth he drew a non-shooting-foul. Meanwhile, Juan Carlos Navarro was running 28 pick and rolls (with a very meagre output), Fran Vazquez and Boniface N’Dong were taking midrange fadeaways while Pete Mickeal and Chuck Eidson, arguably the best small forward tandem in European basketball, were combining for four points on one for twelve shooting.

Olympiakos was, as Ivkovic explained afterwards, heavily overloading the strong side where Barca’s two most potent scorers were running side screen and roll, leaving plenty of room and opportunity on the weakside. The swingaround too often resulted in a missed or passed up shot, though, followed by the dump down low to one of Barca’s incapable post centers. Halfcourt teams need high-percentage halfcourt options, and Barca never found them.

Freed from having to defend the tall and skilled Lorbek too often down the floor, Printezis thrived on offense, jumping out in transition, taking – and making – key long range shots and attacking the basket in setplay. But the sensation, as we may rightfully tag a 12-8 team’s victory over a 18-1 best-record-holder, had many sources.

Ivkovic later remarked that Olympiakos had beaten Barca at its own game, a slow, 66 possessions per team contest where fastbreak opportunities were few and far between.

Some may claim that Olympiakos had luck on its side, and it is very obvious they had on Sunday, as any winner of a one-point-ballgame has. I refuse to believe, though, that holding Montepaschi Siena to 94.9 points per 100 possessions (Siena’s rest-of-the-season offensive rating: 108.1), Barcelona to 92.8 OR (105.7) and CSKA to 84.7 OR (115.5), over the course of six games, 240 minutes and 436 defensive possessions, is down to luck. More likely: They had decent defensive quality all year and improved even further in the later stages of the season.

Therefor, three defensive difference makers:

• Vangelis Mantzaris chased Navarro through countless on- and offball-screens, disrupting passes and frustrating him like few others before. Waiting in the final: Teodosic.
• Kostas Papanikolaou played phenomenal defense on Eidson and Mickeal, as Ivkovic aknowledged in post-final press conference. Athletic, active, smart, aggressive.
• Joey Dorsey covers plenty of room in pick and roll defense. Deflections, blocked shots, you name it.

Hunger? Passion? Enthusiasm? All translates into aggressiveness. And they are ridiculously quick on their heels, crowding postplayers before running shooters off their long distance shots. Ivkovic’s Olympiakos has to take certain risks as far as the allowance of weakside jumpshots goes, but once the ball is swung to the other side, they are flying crosscourt to close out shots.

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“He gets better step by step, works his tail off on defense.” Kyle Hines, a 1.96 center who Ivkovic himself had tagged a “three playing the five” after Hines and Bamberg had dismantled a then far more expensive Piraeus roster roughly one and a half years ago, personifies this undersized underdog roster. Hines finishes the game with zero points, zero for four from the field and four turnovers, but sitting here at the postgame press conference, Ivkovic has nothing but praise left for the guy.

The stretch when a youthful and hopelessly undersized Olympiakos lineup turned the game around will be remembered for ages in Piraeus and beyond. Vangelis Mantzaris (born 1990, 196cm), Kostas Sloukas (1990, 190), Marko Keselj (1988, 208), Georgios Printezis (1985, 202) and Kyle Hines (1986, 198) went on a 14-0 run between the 29th and 33rd minute, bringing the margin from nineteen down to five and setting up the Papanikolaou and Printezis heroics that were about to follow.

Up to that point, the 2011/2012 Euroleague Final had been a one-sided affair. With the sensational Mantzaris out on the bench taking a breather, Vassilis Spanoulis, tirelessly running pick and roll and showing plenty of maturity down the stretch as team leader, was going to defend Milos Teodosic, but fighting through screens has never been his forte. Two open looks later, Olympiakos is down nine, and Teodosic races down the court for a transition three from eight meters out – down twelve.

When a Gordon/Shved-led surge put the Russians ahead by nineteen late in the third quarter, the odds were strongly in CSKA’s favor. Instead, all hell broke loose: The aforementioned five brought Olympiakos into striking distance, the reinserted Papanikolaou made big play after big play before Printezis, in his first year back home from a disappointing time in Malaga, took over in crunch time, fouling out Khryapa on the and one before nailing the shot of the year with 0.7 seconds left, a high-arcing floater from a good three meters out, right on the baseline.

Asked whether he considers the season a “failure”, Kazlauskas did not decline. It’s been a record-breaking season for a team that has played fantastic basketball throughout the year, finishing on a historical 114.2 offensive rating and a league-2nd 63.5 percent assisted field goals. Their Final Four performance however, semifinal and final altogether, must be considered a disappointment.

For Vassilis Spanoulis, this is a special title, the first as undisputed team leader. And a pretty good leader he’s been.

For Ivkovic, the final was just an “unexpected moment”.