The history of basketball in our country is such that Finland must never lose, especially not in the round of 16 of the European Championship. When it…
When you've been watching things move in a bad direction for a while, can it really be that much of a surprise if everything doesn't turn out for the best in the end?
Okay, because the relegation of the Serbian basketball team in the round of 16 of the European Championship is one of the biggest embarrassments of domestic basketball in the history of the game under hoops.
No matter how unbelievable the game of our team seemed from the second round of the group stage onwards, no one could have guessed that, already at the first elimination hurdle, we would be defeated by a country that is anything but basketball.
This is where we should stop and curb our basketball - or if you want, sports - predominance and accept that other countries are progressing daily with systematic work and a nerdy approach.
Finland, the country that inflicted one of the most shocking defeats in history on us last night, has one NBA star (Markkanen), two players with Euroleague and Eurocup experience (Jantunen and Salin), a couple of young and talented players, as well as a coach who only reached the position of assistant at the Euroleague level.
They learn and progress.
Along with the leader of the Utah Jazz, Lauri Markkanen, the biggest name in Finnish basketball is one coach - Tuomas Isalo - who recently became the head coach in the NBA, and before that he worked wonders with the teams of Paris and Bonn.
Whoever listened to him at the Belgrade Coaching Clinic could hear how important the Serbian basketball school was to his coaching journey, how much he learned from our coaches, and how impressed he was by the passion that people in this region have for sports.
The point of the story is that others, watching and learning from us, became better and more successful, both individually and as a team, while we wrote about the numerous problems of our basketball in one of the previous written editions of "Vremena".
However, there is no systemic problem that can explain the relegation in the round of 16 of a national team that has consistently had the best basketball player on the planet for the past five years, the player who decided the final game of the Euroleague, the highest paid player in European basketball, a young and talented starter in the NBA, as well as a few more grateful players who play at the highest European level, and who also have the experience of winning numerous national team medals and club trophies.
Why this team played so poorly - which we wrote about in detail in the analyzes after the games - is a question, first of all, for the coach. Pešić did not think much, he led the strongest team in terms of names and reputation, but the first problematic signs started to appear already in the duel with Portugal.
It was considered that the weaker games against Portugal and Latvia, i.e. the defeat against Turkey, could serve as a warning for what is to come, and most importantly in the tournament team competitions.
However, all this was not enough of a warning, just as neither were the examples of Turkey and Germany, who, earlier in the day, were hard-pressed by outsiders like Sweden and Portugal.
Who is jumping there?
When it comes to the game itself, it is enough to point out two statistics - our team scored 92 points and allowed 20 offensive rebounds to the opponent. Before that, Finland only managed to score more points against Great Britain and Sweden, and was defeated by Germany by 30 points.
However, the Finns came out on the field fully prepared, and the opponent's coaching staff won an even more convincing victory over their colleagues than the final result of the game (86:92) indicates. There are many illogicalities in the management of the game and the use of certain players by coach Pešić, but we will not go into too much criticism, because there will certainly be plenty of them.
Before any criticism, we should remember the numerous successes we achieved with Pešić at the head of the national team. It is enough to remember the previous two summers and the medals won, and the game with America will remain, despite the defeat, remembered as one of the brightest in the history of our basketball.
However, this result must not pass without analysis and condemnation - both of the coach, the players and the association. Bogdanović's injury is a huge handicap that could prove to be irreparable in duels with France or Germany, but it must not and cannot be a justification for defeat by a very modest Finnish team.
This must not be
Finland, plain and simple, had to be beaten routinely, especially after the warnings sent to us by Portugal, Latvia and Turkey. Why a good part of our team looked completely indisposed, and where that team spirit and the levity that graced us throughout the preparatory period was lost, will hardly ever be explained.
Allowing your opponent 20 rebounds and 13 field goal attempts more is simply unacceptable and a sign that you didn't try hard enough. We should not point fingers at individuals, because they have brought us a lot of joy in the past, and we hope they will do so again in the future.
However, it must be pointed out that they have greatly disappointed their nation, a nation for which basketball is more than just entertainment and a means of killing time. The Serbian national basketball team is under more pressure than the national team members of any other country, but the love they receive is proportionally greater than that of others.
The history of this wonderful sport in our country is such that evenings like the previous one simply must not happen. Or, if they had to happen already, they must not be repeated.
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