The Euroleague season is over – at least Pablo Laso no longer denies that in the press conference late on Friday evening. You can save yourself the time that would now be spent on a stochastic calculation to find out how small the FC Bayern basketball players’ chances of advancing in the Euroleague are. Simply because there is already an away game in Bamberg on Sunday (3:30 p.m.) and it is “important that we keep the lead in the BBL,” as the coach says. So: concentrate on the national championship, although of course we will approach the two remaining games in the Euroleague very seriously. They don’t want to be accused of distorting competition.
Now Laso, who won the Euroleague twice with Real Madrid, had certainly hoped to be able to make an international statement in his first year with the Munich team. But after the 79:87 defeat against FC Barcelona on Friday evening in their own hall, it is actually clear that the team can play for the playoffs, but that little things were regularly missing in order to ultimately be among the top ten. “The problem this season is that we are chasing a deficit in so many games,” criticized shooting guard Nick Weiler-Babb, who scored 17 points against Barcelona.
Coach Laso thought they hadn’t missed the playoffs against the top Basque team and that the performance this time was okay. He looked back at those games against direct competitors for the play-in positions that were only decided in the final seconds. The 56-year-old’s conclusion: “Some players were out at the wrong times due to injuries. And in some situations we lacked experience.” The long absence of captain Vladimir Lucic at the start of the season also did not have a positive effect.
At least the team played for the playoff places until the end of March, so a loss of tension was prevented. And the chances of winning the German championship are currently much higher than those of producing a miracle against Panathinaikos Athens (April 5th) and AS Monaco (April 11th).