In a Euroleague matchday in which Barça and Real Madrid had decided their respective matches by just one point difference, with the Whites in their favor (100-99 against Zalgiris) and the Azulgranas against (), Valencia Basket and Baskonia, the other two Spanish teams in contention in the top continental competition, yesterday gave a good blow to the table.
The Vitorians resolved their duel first, coming back after a bad start against Bayern Munich and, led by a great Markquis Nowell (12 points, eight assists and two rebounds for a PIR of 20), they found their way back to victory at the Buesa Arena (95-73), where they had not played in front of their fans for 15 days.
Half an hour later, the Valencia Basket match began at the Roig Arena, where Pedro Martínez’s team faced Red Star, co-leader of the Euroleague with eight wins in 11 games, identical to that of the surprising Hapoel Jerusalem.
The match arrived with just one possession advantage for the grapefruits in the last ten seconds, and there, with his pulse more rapid than usual, the Serbian Nikola Kalinic made a mistake on a throw-in and gave the ball to Valencia Basket, who did not let the advantage slip away and won again (76-73) in the Euroleague after last week’s defeat in Paris.
“We knew how to pick up the pace in defense at the moment of truth and they arrived tired at the final stretch, because it was a tough and very physical match,” he commented after the conclusion in the Movistar+ microphones. “It was a heads or tails ending. Last week we got tails and this time it came up heads.”
“Keep one of my players today? In the end, I’m more about teamwork than individual distinctions,” said the coach of a team that, seventh in the Euroleague after this Friday’s victory, does not have any player among the 33 top scorers in the competition. One fact, another one, that underlines the triumph of the collective over the particular.
This is how the Euroleague classification looks after the 12th day
