Mundobasket 2010. Basketball is a nice game, especially when it is played under the same conditions for both teams…
Posted by katsoyan on Sunday, September 12, 2010
The game of Turkey against Serbia finished some minutes ago. Turkey won for one point. During the whole game Serbia had the lead, but finally Turkey won.
I must say that until the 30th minute I was supporting Turkey, because I backed them. Some hours before the game, I passed from the William Hill’s shop, next door to my house, and backed Turkey. Placed the biggest bet I have ever played. I am not betting a lot of money, but today I was sure Turks would qualify. I did that because I was sure that they would be better than Serbia. That changed at the last minutes of the game. It was really annoying seeing the Referrees playing Turkey all the time. There are some limits. Nobody expected a 50-50. It is difficult. But not like that. The referees were allowing the 40 minutes complaining of the Turkish, they were allowing their very tough defense and especially at the last period they messed up. After 3 minutes in the last period, Serbia had already 5 fouls. Apart from that, they never punished with a Technical foul the continuous entrances of Turkish bench in the court, nor the fact that all 5 players were going to have unofficial time outs often with their coach. At a certain moment, a Turkish blocked a Serb shot (was going down, it should count), then the Turkish player who caught the ball, stepped on the line, never the less they let him play, the ball went to Turkoglou who travelled before getting a foul from Theodosic (who asked for an offensive foul, but it was clearly a deffensive one).
Then we come to the last seconds of the game. They gave a goal-foul to the Turkish player and fouled-out Krstic (there was not touch), and instead, at the next action, when the Serbs scored and a goal-foul should be awarded, they closed the eyes…
It has to be mentioned that the speaker of the Stadium was shouting Turkiye Turkiye all the time. Absolutely normal, happens everywhere, it is just unfair for the opponents.
The other game, USA vs Lithuania was a nice game, where the team USA won easily with a great performance by Kevin Durrant. Lietuva could have some chances, but Linas Kleizas “betrayed” his team mates with a very poor, actually negative, performance. Similarly to Kleizas, the Turkish Ilyasova was also practically absent, and his poor performance almost condemned his team.
I close by saying that Tanjevic was worth to be there, because he is a great coach and a real fighter (he has cancer since some years). But also Dusan Ivcovic should be there, especially if somebody takes into consideration the roster of Serbia.
I close saying that all the 5-6 first teams presented very much talent in this tournament and a big number of good players. Unfortunately Greece is left a lot behind and new players should be put forward.
Good luck to the Americans tomorrow. I think they deserve it. And, coach K deserves to win a Mundobasket gold.
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katsoyan said
I don’t remember when it was the last time that I enjoyed watching basketball as I did tonight, with watching the Team USA!
A Fantastic TEAM, creature of Coach K, maybe the best Coach from the other part of the Atlantic Ocean.
Congratulations USA
Fotios said
yeah, what a team. So, what do you think is wrong with the Greek team then?
katsoyan said
As far as the Greek team is concerned:
a) I don’t like personally the way Kazlauskas plays. I don’t think the Greek mentality can follow the way Kazlauskas organizes his game. Not now, I have been saying that since 2005, when he took over Olympiakos.
b) The Greek team had nothing new to present. They know us. We have the same team since 2005 and not only we don’t bring something new and really good, but also, good players like Papaloukas do not participate. All our opponents realised that we are not good at 3-points shoots and they were letting us shoot all the time. In friendly games, the shoots go in easily, in a Mundobasket, hmmm, it is aomewhat more tough. You show that against Turkey we could not score from long-distance although most of the times they were on their own.
c) The other teams, almost all of them were very good at this world cup, and on top of that, we are not any longer the favorite kids of FIBA. If you saw the game of Turkey vs Serbia, probably you noticed that Serbians are no longer FIBA’s favourites too:-)
katsoyan said
In addition, the game against Serbia destroyed our good climate.
Then, the fact that every good or bad think happens is attributed either to Olympiakos or Panathinaikos creates a bad atmosphere. In addition, what happennes between Olympiakos and Panathinaikos (e.g. the last game that never finished) has definitely an impact on the atmosphere of the national team. Exactly the opposite of what Otto Rehagel was doing in the football team
katsoyan said
something else Fotios.
What impressed me greatly at the Mundobasket was that players who had the chance to shoot free, rarely they lost the shoot. I mean the good teams.
The Greek team instead had Diamantidis in a series of bad days, Zissis and Spanoulis who had good stats yet not perfect, bouroussis and tsartsaris were ok, but Guards like Kalathis are not acceptable any more. He is a professional player. He should be able to shoot better. He should improve drastically before he is invited the next time to the national team.
Fotios said
Strangely you don’t seem to mention what I think is the biggest problem of this team. They got no game under the basket! No rebound, no speed, no pivot, no good short-range shooting. We have no real center. Bourousis is below average in my opinion, Vougioukas does not exist and Sofo is just a good forward (position 4) on his good days that still does not know how to bounce the ball. Greek guards are pretty good but for the team to win they have to shoot at least 60%. How often is that going to happen? I agree the coach was part of the problem as well. Too old fashioned, too slow to react and too hard headed with his choices. I don’t see why he played Tsartsaris and some other guys so little.
katsoyan said
Foti, I agree with what you say about centers, I wrote that also to another article of mine (in Facebook), but I did not insist on that, because we never had a “heavy” pivot the last 5 years. After Lazaros was “stopped” from the national team, this characteristic of our game did not exist any more, but still we got a medal last year.
Fotios said
Perhaps if Koufos was to play the team would get what it needs – then again Koufos is more likely to want to play in the US national team. Last year, I remember, we had rebound – though Eurobasket is very different from Mundobasket. However, this year, Tsartsaris and some others were not allowed to help as much as they probably could, Fotsis was down, Bourousis was his usual average self (maybe down a bit) and big-Sofo was too small. I remember in 2006 we had 4-5 strong rebounders. Now, just one or two. It was really sad to see the team lose so many defensive rebounds in so many games. Add to that bad shooting from the guards and you get the recipe for complete and utter failure.
katsoyan said
Fotie, Koufos cannot play for the USA team because he has played for the Greek National team and I don’t think he can change. He was just not invited this year.
katsoyan said
and you remember that last year that he was part of the team he played only for some minutes and it was obvious that he was not ready to be part of that team. He does not know the type of game Kazlauskas wanted to play. He is not good in pick n’ roll that all greek teams are using a lot.
I think the team was not as bad as you say. It was going well, we had a bad moment against the Serbs and played very bad against the Turkey, in a game that we had bad referees and Turks made their best game. That was all. The teams know each other very well, so Greece that had nothing new to present was easily faced by all other teams, mainly by zone defense. And we just didn’t shoot as well as we should have done.