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We close with the AS Awards a year 2023 full of successes for Spanish sport, individually and collectively, where a Real Madrid basketball team that perfectly represents the essence of the club has stood out.the one that leads him to never give up because he feels capable of anything, of feats on the field that are almost more like an act of faith than a sporting feat.
The 2022-23 Euroleague was the Madrid of feats, from prodigy to prodigy until the final triumph. A season with difficult moments, of certain irregularity, with problems in the base position and a great dependence on Tavares, but in which Chus Mateo never stopped building, without going off the road in the sharpest curves. “I told you that the day it was time to define the point guards was going to work out, I told you so and that’s how it happened“, he told the press after the decisive role of Chacho. It was true, he told us so, and not once, but several times. And in May everything was done click and the white team chained one month, five games, of true madness, at the height of the most epic stories in the juicy history of merengue basketball. It was not just another trophy, it was the Undécima, a European Cup that leaves its mark.
Because winning the current Euroleague, where the competitiveness and calendar are savage, is extremely demanding. And achieve it like Madrid did last year, with the finishing touch of a fantastic Final Four in Kaunas and the basket impossible of Llull, but with the baggage of all the above, It represents an indelible achievement. That of a Madrid that has rewritten history: No one had ever come back from 0-2 in a five-game playoff. He rose in an astonishing way against Partizan in the fifth round of the quarter-final series when, after hitting twice in Belgrade after the Palace fight, he lost by 18 in the third period with three significant absences and the rival was already full Yes, with Kevin Punter as a piledriver (only the injured Avramovic was missing). AND He closed those 18 points gap one by one with 16 from Sergio Rodríguez in 9 minutes and 8 from Llull to sneak into the Final Four and embrace the title by the heroic route.
“It is very difficult to stop a player with such talent, because he is a trickster with the ball, you don’t know where he is. Sometimes he has shortcomings behind him, but in attack… when he takes out the muleta and starts to fight he is fantastic, magical“, the compliment for Chacho is from his coach.
Without the injured Deck and Poirier and without Yabusele (sanctioned for the ugly tangana in the second match against the Serbians), Real defeated Mirotic’s Barça in the semifinal after a tremendous display by Tavares (20 goals, 15 rebounds and 4 blocks in the critical stretch for a PIR of 39) and disarmed in the final the great favorite, the Olympiacos of Sloukas and Vezenkov, the Piraeus army, which dominated all the predictions and was 6 up in Lithuania with 2:10 remaining. The old guard, that formed by Sergios, Rudy and also Causeur (authors of 16 of the last 20 points), plus Tavares, Hezonja… and the 2-3 zone worked the last miracle.
Madrid won its third Euroleague in this century, the first without Pablo Laso, being faithful to the precepts of an unwritten rule by which only in-house coaches succeed. Chus Mateo is the sixth merengue coach to lift the European Cup and all of them, except Zeljko Obradovic (the exception of the greatest, which confirms the rule), had a great background at the club. And there’s even more, the Madrid native is the only one along with the Serbian (winner in 1995) to reach the jackpot in his debut season as head coach. Neither Joaquín Hernández (1964), nor Pedro Ferrándiz (1965), nor Lolo Sainz (1978), nor Pablo Laso (2015) won in their first European participation.
“He suffered more than anyone so that we could achieve it, we achieved it because of him, because he believed in us and gave us a lot of confidence. He pushed us to be better. His motto was to keep your head up if there were mistakes“, explains Tavares, who said this after the final: “Many should apologize to him, because he received a lot of criticism. Chus Mateo is the bossWhen you talk about Madrid, you have to talk about him. He deserves it more than anyone because he is one of the best people I have ever met in my life and he knew how to manage everything and never gave up, which is why we came back from 0-2 against Partizan. We knew we could do it”.
A reaffirmation of the figure of the coach that Florentino Pérez influenced, even before placing the trophy in the display cases: “I am very happy for him, because he has had a difficult year and people have been unfair to him. We are giving him the recognition of a great coach, because from now on there is no doubt that he is a great coach“. The president spoke of a “a victory of faith, of conviction, of unity, because by fighting until the end things are achieved”. “We don’t always win, but we do it many times because of the culture and values of this club”. Sergio Rodríguez, the shadow MVP of Kaunas, as Causeur in 2018summed it up well: “We are very proud, not only of the Final Four, but of the entire process of the last few weeks. We have Llull and we know that these things happen with him. I am lucky to have had him as a partner and to have shared many moments like this.”.
“The best in the last second”
A Euroleague final brings together many stories in one, all decisive to embrace success: that of Tavares as MVP, that of Chacho as the best point guard in Europe when he played and that of Sergio Llull. That of the captain will be eternal, author of one of the most iconic baskets in a European Cup finalat the level of Djordjevic’s triple or Printezis’s target.
Madrid took the Undécima with the most important success of Llull’s career, the one who decided the final with 3 seconds remaining with a lofted shot and leaning back to gain space with which to overcome Moustapha Fall’s 218 centimeters. An action after a time-out by Chus Mateo in which the coach asked him: “Sergi, do you want her?”. There were 12 seconds left. “He painted the play for me, he forced me to shoot. The team believes in me for these shots and, if I had missed, Tavares would have gotten the rebound”, assures the Menorcan. “All his teammates were thinking about giving him the ball.“, says Mateo, while Tavares was also clear: “He is the best player in the last second, under that pressure”. Jackpot.