Who needs the NBA when there is the Euroleague? Now we can already hear the apologists of American professional basketball sneering. What do you want on your old continent? Your best come to us in the best league in the world and stay, if they make it. Much more money, more glamour and here and there better individualists tempt. But better games? At this point, the roar gives way to the small-sounding. Europe's basketball is more exciting.
Would you like a receipt? Then I looked at the States, where the fight for the NBA title is at best gradually intensifying. It is 3-0 in one semifinal for Miami, 3-0 it was on Monday in the other for Denver against the Los Angeles Lakers. Yawn. Almost at the same time, the Euroleague played its final on Sunday evening in Kaunas. Twelve seconds before the end, Olympiacos Piraeus took a timeout.
One point in the lead, but Real Madrid in possession. Can it be more exciting, more spectacular? The directors did not believe in it and played the "magic moment" of the game during the last meeting between coach and players: a three-point shot by Vezenkov, as painted, the crowning glory of his performance for Piraeus with 29 points; but sent too early, nine seconds.
In a high arc over outstretched arms
This is typical of the best league in Europe. She still has something to add if the inclined viewer thinks the climax has been reached. But once again brilliant moments of the old guard of Real Madrid, as Belgrade showed in the last match of the quarter-finals despite an 18-point deficit, as they played FC Barcelona on Friday in the semi-finals in the last seven minutes with Rodriguez as the head, enchanting ball distributor, elegant thrower? The man is almost 37 years old, as if made for the last twelve seconds, for the last attempt to turn the razor-thin deficit of one point into a victory.
The fact that Madrid's last throw-in did not end up with him will not have surprised basketball experts. Llull got him, the not much younger counterpart, but without a single success in this game after a weak season. Llull threw as he likes to throw. In a high arc over the outstretched arms of the 2.20 meter long opponent, the ball fell into the basket: 78:77.
Admittedly, this is also how a game is decided in the NBA. But in contrast to the season in the States, the grandiose finale of the Euroleague reflects the course of 34 matchdays including play-off rounds: always intense thanks to a serious defense, at a high tactical and technical level, often exciting until the last minute. "Why wander," Goethe wrote, "look, the good is so close."