81-66 at the Wizink Center Narration and statistics
Real Madrid caresses what anyone in their right mind would have denied a hundred times.
When in the spring everything was ruin, a fall without a net such as had never been seen in the Laso era, imagining such a reaction despite all the misfortunes, was only for very believers.
But this group, in which Llull and Rudy continue to be the heart, puts self-esteem ahead of everything.
On Sunday, again at the Palace, he can reconquer the ACB three years later and close a course in which he only lost the Cup and the Euroleague in the very abyss.
He has a shot at it because he has achieved something that is only available to groups of those who seal the cracks before the building collapses.
Because he has managed to turn Barça's permanent smiles into the same frustration that nothing imposed on him.
Because he even managed to prevent Jasikevicius from winning at the WiZink as in the previous six.
Because the third stake extended the line of what had been the final from the Palau.
Desire drove him to crush the rival, to ruin him based on second chances, steals, divided balls, those things that have so much to do with desire.
With Deck, Causeur and Yabusele in command and an abysmal distance on the rebound, this time there was no rush or controversy.
Nor news of Mirotic.
For the third time in the last four precedents, Madrid won the classic.
In his private garden, that WiZink in which he made his debut as head coach in the Euroleague in 2016 and in which he had never lost as a Barça player, Sarunas Jasikevicius had to turn his plans around, inject the energy of Dante Exum and sacrifice Nigel Hayes in his dismissal of non-community citizens.
He did it by popular request and it didn't work out for him, as it usually does.
He planted the Australian, a once differential type, in the quintet.
A fight every two days, at such a level of agony and exhaustion, at this point in the season where the batteries are rock bottom, makes the boxers show a few moments of initial laziness, which soon breaks into a wild exchange, where there are no more squeamishness that they are worth, where all the pending accounts emerge in these infinite duels: Sunday's will be the tenth classic of the season, from September to almost July battling.
So it didn't take long for the fuse to light up, with small back-and-forth partials, with goads from Hanga or Llull, with errors that drove Jasikevicius crazy, but also with responses like two triples in a row from Kuric that made Barça not lose control
The equality of the first act was understood from the losses of the visitors (11 at the break) and from the mistake of the locals.
But the former insisted on the mistake and a triple by Deck (34-26, min. 16) fired for the first time at a Madrid that was once again the owner of sensations, as in the two games at the Palau, in which it was almost always ahead.
Only three final free throws by Brandon Davies due to an error by Yabusele prevented even greater harm for the Catalans.
But the return of changing rooms was symptomatic.
None of the reaction Saras demanded.
Quite the contrary, errors, simple baskets in the paint and Deck's irruption to put the maximum (55-42, min. 23).
Barça clung to Calathes and that Kyle Kuric who does nothing was forgotten, like a lifeguard in the middle of the ocean.
And to the game as he could: a 0-8 after the third by Tavares gave him back a little life.
But it didn't take long for Madrid to recover, with two penetrations by Causeur, with the umpteenth offensive rebound.
With that extra ferocity that is making the difference.
Because Barça threw the lines up as a desperate resource, but without the necessary faith to make it effective.
And Poirier gobbled up an unrecognizable Davies and that was a paradigm of almost everything else.
At the beginning of the last act, Barça was like a tremulous boxer: he needed a breath to fall to the canvas.
His oxygen was impossible penetrations, individual boasts that almost never found a good port.
Like the desperate Laprovittola, little trace of Mirotic.
And Madrid, with a Deck as a leader, smelled blood.
And he did not forgive, despite the fatigue, despite his own mistakes.
Two baskets by Yabusele -the second a tremendous kill after an offensive rebound, another- stretched the maximum (72-53), to the delight of WiZink, who scared away the last of his ghosts, that of Jasikevicius.
More than six minutes to go and the battle of battles was already settled.
On Sunday, the same scenario, the Whites will seek the sixth League of the Laso era, the 23rd title of a period that, for a moment, seemed to be extinguished.
But that, even with the Vitorian absent,
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