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Photo: BNS
BNS photo
The Euroleague WEOLE BACK tournament, which took place over the weekend, completed the preparation of Kaunas Žalgiris for the 2020-2021 season.
Kaunas Žalgiris / Schedule
The Lithuanian champions, who played for the spectators for the first time after the pandemic, broke Athens’ Panathinaikos 81:74 on Saturday, but were unable to do anything in the final of the tournament against Milan AX Armani Exchange – 70:88.
If during the first three friendlies, which were played behind closed doors, we saw the impressive numbers of “Žalgiris” in attack (98.7 points, 55.8 percent trit.), Then the matches with the Euroleague teams they were more defensive.
Although we have only seen two games live and there is very little information to draw conclusions, the duel with Pao and the AX Armani Exchange gave us a closer look at the playing philosophy of new manager Martin Schiller and showed what trends we can expect for the next season.
The BasketNews.lt website, when reviewing Žalgiris’ play in the WE’RE BACK tournament, highlighted 5 elements of the game that were the most notable.
A quick transition from defense to attack
In the game of “Žalgiris” from the first minutes of the match with “Panathinaikos”, aggression was seen on defense and the game on the verge of a foul.
So much aggressiveness and intensity on defense took the Greeks out of their rhythm of play and they made mistakes simply by passing the ball to a teammate, allowing the Žalgiris to launch a quick attack and score easy points.
It’s taking on a quick attack and racking up quick and easy points that will be one of Schiller’s highlights this season.
Panathinaikos made a mistake 15 times in the duel with Žalgiris, and 11 times of all the errors by the Greeks, they simply ended up with the ball intercepted by the hosts, and most of them, with light points from Kaunas.
However, in the final, the Milan club appreciated the ball much more (5 billion) and allowed Žalgiris to take charge of only 3 balls, thus almost eliminating Kaunas’ fast attack and his aggression on defense, becoming more often in human loss and easy points than in a mistake.
True, even after failing to intercept the ball, Kaunas quickly tried to move to the other side of the field and began spinning a new attack, which was often characterized by a large number of punches. picenrole, spike attack looking great rolinančio Joffrey Lauvergne, and the Frenchman should be a very important part of the attack on Grunwald next season.
Improvisation
From Žalgiris’ first friendly match, we learned about the greater freedom provided by the players, and we could see it in the matches with Panathinaikos and AX Armani Exchange.
Forget the Šarūnas Jasikevičius system and strict rules of attack: Schiller’s philosophy of the game is absolutely different and emphasizes Žalgiris’ individual dominance.
We saw no complicated combinations in Žalgiris’s game over the weekend, it was all based on freedom, and if it worked freely against the heavy and tall Pao, then the hosts were caught in the clutches of the opponents’ defense against the pupils of Ettore Messina.
Marius Grigonis, Lukas Lekavičius, Rokas Jokubaitis, Thomas Walkup or Steve Vasturia knew the slowness of Georgios Papagiannis or Kostas Mitoglou in defense and they took advantage of the attack by constantly attacking them in various ways, but it did not work against the AX Armani Exchange.
Milan team with moving heights like Kyle Hines, Jeff Brooks or Zach LeDay Pikenrolo on defense he was free to change everything, which severely knocked out Žalgiris.
Perimeter players “Žalgiris” could barely beat the opponents’ moving highs 1×1, and opponents Lauvergne, who found themselves under the basket, quickly doubled down, which in the first half of the match completely cut off the good movement of the ball from Kaunas and surprised Schiller after the game.
“No matter how crazy it sounds, the hardest part was the attack. We couldn’t score, and they hit particularly well and it looked like we were running like before the tsunami,” the Austrian said at the post-match press conference.
Frequent changes in defense systems
In both games with Panathinaikos and AX Armani Exchange, we could see a very frequent change of Kaunas’ defense systems.
In two days “Žalgiris” Pikenrolo in defense we could see both protection (when the defender himself flies under the barrier and returns to the direct opponent) and leave (when a tall man stops an opponent with a ball and returns to his man), both side to (when the defender leaves the opponent alone on one side and at the bottom comes a high-altitude help) as well as the exchange of defenders (when the defenders exchange at the barrier).
If the defense against the Greeks remained mediocre, AX Armani Exchange’s perimeter players overcame this defense system with individual mastery: after Hines’s tough barriers, Žalgiris’s players failed to escape quickly, and Malcolm Delaney, Kevin Punter and Sergio Rodrigu used it. one of three points after another.
Side’o Milan basketball players also smashed the defense with individual mastery and still found a way to slide with the ball in the middle, or played pikenpopą and in this case I found a free skyscraper on the perimeter.
If with Stepouto the defense was still able to protect itself quite a bit from a comfortable long throw from the opponents, so the question arises whether this Žalgiris will be able to use that system due to the exchange of defenders.
When the residents of Kaunas were sanctioned with three points by the defenders of the Milan club, after the break “Žalgiris” with Augustine Rubit tried in the square pikenrole However, Rodriguez immediately hit a three-point stick, and the other two attacks in a row by AX Armani Exchange simply stretched the defense of the Lithuanian champions.
It’s obvious that the feet of Rubit, who debuted at Žalgiris this weekend, are too slow to defend on the perimeter, at least at this stage of the season, and Lauvergne and Martin Geben aren’t very good at guessing against opposing defenders either.
Lack of height on the perimeter
“Žalgiris” spent up to 24 triples over the weekend and, although most of them were due to the defense system applied pikenrole, when using shelter, or just complex, lack of height also contributed to some.
While Patricio Garino continues to rehabilitate after the operation of the cruciate ligaments, in third position we will see Vasturi, Artūras Milaknis or Grigonis.
The tallest of these players, 198 cm tall, is Grigonis, but he, being of lighter physique, is not used to supervising the opponents’ third numbers, and when on the other side of the field 201 cm Vladimir Micov, 203 cm Luigi Datome, or even 205 cm Ioannis Papapetrou, becomes a problem.
Schiller revealed that Garino will return to the field most likely in 4 weeks, and during this time “Žalgiris” will have played 4 matches, during which the lower line of the Kaunas perimeter will have to fight against such light edges as Kostas Papanikolaou, Janis Timma or Krunoslav Simon.
It was also surprising when, even with the hands of Lekavičius, Jokubaitis or Vasturia, players on the opponents’ perimeter easily threw long shots, and if Garino comes back to give versatility on defense, then Žalgiris will have to think about how to solve the problem of size at the start of the Euroleague.
Changes
Both the actions on the field and the words after the game best demonstrated how the philosophy of American basketball differs from the usual one.
“From the middle of the third quarter to the end, they gave us a huge boost in the second five and therefore we reduced the deficit,” Schiller said after the game with the AX Armani Exchange.
The second five? It’s rare for us in the Euroleague to hear a coach talk about the second five, but this is exactly how Schiller views the “Žalgiris” rotation.
In all friendly matches, Kaunas started the match with the same starting five: Walkup, Grigonis, Vasturia, Hayes and Lauvergne and the tendency was for these five to spend very little time on the field with other players.
“I don’t think they will see us play with different players every time, it will be more or less stable,” said the Austrians after the semi-final duel with Pao.
Lekavičius, Jokubaitis, Milaknis, Rubitas, Jankūnas and Gebenas are now the so-called second five for Žalgiris, and Tomas Dimša, entered for both games, did not run on the floor for a second.
Going back to Garino on the floor, the rotation will certainly change, but the fact that Schiller sees the team’s rotation at five, and regardless of events in the square, seems interesting and unnoticed in Kaunas.
This practice is common in NBA teams, but it is difficult to say how it will work in the Euroleague, where many more tactics are used. On the other hand, such a Schiller philosophy, by assigning a playing time similar to the five, should allow maintaining a high intensity throughout the game.
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