FC Barcelona versus Bayern Munich: millions are watching – when the game is kicked off.
On Thursday, the two top European clubs in the sport played basketball.
Everyone who wasn't looking missed something - Bayern's victory in the second Euroleague play-off game: 90:75 for Munich in Barcelona. It was almost silent in the hall.
Agencies wrote about a sensation.
But there are sensations every day.
The game offered more than one presumably intoxicating feeling for Bayern fans, nurtured by the inner voice that anything but a losing streak against the most successful team in Europe's best league this year was a miracle.
Basketball offers few approaches to the inexplicable, no matter how spectacular dribbling, flights or grandiose throwing quotas from downtown, i.e. from the other part of the city, may appear.
About the 85.7 percent rate of three (six out of seven) of Deshaun Thomas from Munich.
No wonder, rather hard training.
Basketball is more about quick changes, from one day to the next, from the zero number to the top man of the evening, to pick out a solo.
That was worth seeing, but by itself it wasn't a special moment of the game itself.
In very few sports, coaches and teams can progress so directly, quickly and effectively.
What happened between the defeat in the first of a maximum of five games on Tuesday and the second home game of the Spanish title favorites?
Bayern, who started without Darrun Hilliard (broken collarbone in game one), how transformed?
No, not really.
Set up differently, instructed differently, with a new match plan: fast game, Barcelona don't give the time to allow the defense access and suffocate Munich's offensive in the race with the running attack time, forcing the players to make emergency throws.
You need small players for that, fast, attacking, you have to give them responsibility and leave the big ones on the bench (around twenty minutes playing time for the two centers).
Andreas Obst, hardly used in the first game, 15 minutes, 15 points in the second, the three-point specialist who fired one when there were only fractions of a second left to even get his hands on the ball in time.
Away with it in the greatest stress, in the important moment.
Then the siren sounded before the ball fell through the ring.
An important hit, a big point.
Calm around.
That too was "just" a detail of a big Bayern game that wasn't characterized by a particularly high level of faultlessness (16 turnovers), apart from Thomas' performance (25 points).
The special quality lay in the change, which was based on a recognizable plan as the game progressed.
So the chance in basketball, with a certain minimum quality, to surprise and amaze greats like Barcelona thanks to a clever head (you can't do without a big heart anyway), to throw them off their rhythm.
Brandon Davis (8 points), Dante Exum (2), Nicola Mirotic 16, but the star is not at his admirable height.
Why?
Because Munich's toxic defense often went well with successful attacks in attack.
Bayern no longer allowed the home side.
What follows?
First a charged third game on Wednesday in Munich, the first of two home games.
Here Bayern, electrified by what seems possible.
There Barcelona, spurred on by their own claim to live up to the enormous expectation.
Something's brewing.
Barcelona will come up with something to avoid chasing Bayern's tactics again for almost a whole game, trying in vain.
And the Bavarians?
Will try to anticipate the reaction.
Exciting.