You do not remember a Real Madrid like it.

So dejected, so powerless, so overwhelmed.

Shaken by an Anadolu Efes

whose intention to make blood is not even apparent.

On the brink of a trumpeted abyss: for the second time in the last nine seasons he will not be in the Final Four (except for a miracle).

[91-68: Narration and statistics]

Perhaps the best possible Madrid this season would also have been plucked by this Efes, which is a rocket, at the height of the one that just over a year ago the pandemic stopped in its tracks when it was on its way to dominate Europe. But, due to different and troubled circumstances -the last one,

the pubic injury in the warm-up of an Edy Tavares

squeezed throughout the course-, Pablo Laso stood in the moment of truth of the Euroleague without four of the pillars that supported his project 10.0 (without Campazzo, nor Randolph, nor Deck ...). And without warranty replacement. And so, it is not only mission impossible; it is blushing and inappropriate.

You have to look too far back, to those dark pre-Laso times, to remember a Real Madrid so incapable, so far from its opponent.

Not only did he lose again at the Sinan Erdem: this time he did not even threaten to compete.

He returns to Spain with a

2-0 against that nobody ever raised

and there were up to 26 precedents.

Larkin and Micic

The duel was an eternal want and not power, from the very initial jump.

It was even boring.

Just a glimpse of

Trey Thompkins

in the dawn and soon the advantages of the Efes, which was driving forward with the feeling that it did not even need to put its foot down.

Because they entered the triples (12 of 20 at the end) and Real Madrid did not (4 of 25).

And without aiming the perimeter, not even that, not even the heroic was worth the whites.

Laso started with Alex Tyus, ruled out on Tuesday, in the quintet. And

Felipe Reyes

- the other one who was left out then - and Jaycee Carroll, 41 and 38 years old respectively, were his first two relays. Llull tried to play the game behind his back, who have feats recorded by fire. But neither his legs nor those of his companions reached. The freshest, those of Usman Garuba, were omnipresent on the Sinan Erdem floor, pure heart, an example for the rest, until the former Barça player Chris Sigleton, in a very ugly action, knocked him out with an elbow to the face that did not came to mind.

As he could, the visitor resisted until the break, with

Shane Larkin and Vasilike Micic already fired - a lethal foreign couple -

and soon the disadvantage began to border on the grotesque. Everything was an ordeal for Madrid, who fought and fought against a superior rival and against their own ghosts: the shots that dodged the hoop like torture. In the middle of the third act, three consecutive triples from Efes (two from Micic and one from Sanli), were the last straw (61-38): there were more than 13 minutes 'of the garbage'.

Since, 23 days ago,

Ergin Ataman's team

visited a Madrid already on the ropes at the Wizink Center, everything has been an outrage in three acts.

Exactly since the break of that duel, when Tavares began with his physical problems, the accumulated is 248 to 172, winning every fourth disputed.

Next Tuesday, again in the Palace, the third episode of Turkish torture.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Madrid

  • Real Madrid

  • Sergio Llull

  • Spain

  • Pablo Laso Biurrún

  • Europe

  • sports

ACBUsman Garuba and Tristan Vukcevic, two children dominate for Real Madrid a classic of pure epic

EuroleagueReal Madrid, with a heroic Tavares, clings to life

ACB 2020 - 2021Real Madrid does not win for scares

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