Lucas Sáez-Bravo Madrid

Madrid

Updated Thursday, January 25, 2024-22:59

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There has not been such a repeated final in recent times, up to four Madrid-Olympiacos, Olympiacos-Madrid, for the title since 1995. The two most stable and winning teams of the last era in the Euroleague. The Kaunas reissue was, this time, a strange night at WiZink, a real slide. A bad taste in the desserts in the mouth, despite the victory. Because the whites had to win twice, because an unexpected guest appeared when everything already seemed resolved.

Kostas Papanikolaou

, who has been fighting a thousand battles, some in the face of a dog when he was dressed in Barça, had the best offensive performance of his life, 23 points in the second half, and was about to turn everything upside down. [90-85: Narration and statistics]

The numbers don't always explain what is happening on the field, but they do give clues. And, beyond doing things well or not, putting intensity and order in his defense, success was a dictator. For Olympiacos the perimeter was like torture. At halftime they had missed 13 of the 15 triples attempted, the last two on the final play, so liberated, so significant. They then already had a score of 22 points (it became 24) against a rival who, on the other hand, put everything into it. It was like a child's game, you miss, I score. Madrid's eight out of 11 successes made him feel powerful.

They gave him that fluidity that they had lately forgotten. That rhythm that makes him untouchable again. Campazzo's dawn had been one of those that decomposes anything that comes in front of it, in this case Bartzokas's Olympiacos, always so rocky. He melted before the genius of the Argentine, like a magician with his top hat, now you see me and now you don't. Passes, fouls received, baskets, rivals canceled...

Those minutes marked everything else, on a night that was already strange before it began, without giants on the court. Neither Milutinovic, nor Tavares. Neither Llull nor Fall, an inseparable couple for eternity, that shot of Kaunas, that poster in so many children's bedrooms. Even Williams Goss was absent, all due to injury (also Yabusele), returning to the place from which perhaps he should never have left.

With everything apparently already on track, Jude Bellingham arrived at WiZink. And in that second half, revolutions on the ground, Olympiacos tried, without making noise, to get back into the game. He achieved it on the back of his captain, the incombustible Papanikolau. He asserted his defense (the best of the tournament), now, leaving Madrid at 16 points in the third act, and gradually and dangerously got closer.

Until the alarms go off. Because Papanikolau, in a vein, did not stop, triple after triple. And with 40 seconds left they were there (86-83). A show off from Hezonja, two beautiful baskets from a Musa who had previously returned to his old ways with a technique to get his foot out after a triple... Nothing seemed enough. It was a block by Poirier and Campazzo's final determination that closed a strange night, of good and bad feelings, of a second half in which he conceded 55 points.