An opponent, who in recent years has changed many names and head coaches, turned out to be somehow not so. For some reason, it was thought that the Klimamio coach Fabrizio Frates, who led the Italian youth team at last year’s European Championships in Chekhov, unconditionally trusts Marco Belinelli, who pulled the same youth team almost alone. Marco shone last season, revealing the sniper’s developed talent over the years, and Muscovites had every reason to believe that the rising star would also shine in the Russian capital. But Belinelli seemed to be hiding from the rays of glory. Having thrown the ball in the first minutes of the meeting, he was hiding somewhere in the shade, even in the defense lazily watching Andrei Ivanov - far from being the most active in the Dynamo team.
However, even without miracles performed by Belinelli on the site in Krylatskoye there were enough interesting episodes. Impressed by the number of viewers - this time there is no reason to doubt the two thousand indicated in the final protocol. Fans undoubtedly played a big role in the victory of the hosts, who lit the audience with a terrific jerk in the end. Closer to the siren, I almost forgot that at first the football chants of the fans demanded from the team of Dusan Ivkovic not only the Russian championship, but also a kind of Super Bowl, without which the basketball world had somehow learned how to manage.
The support was quite competent.
The next number of the show was a three-point hit by Stefano Mancinelli (unfortunately, in the fourth period, injured) from the corner from the shield! After that, Antonis Fotsis joined in, jumping a ball into the ring after missing one of the partners. By that time, it became clear even to the student that the Greek would become the protagonist of the match. But the Italians, it seems, realized this only by looking at the final protocol.
On this day, Fotsis created almost everything that is possible in basketball on the floor - except that he did not have time to try himself in the role of the playmaker. In defense, the Greek spent most of the match under the ring, trying with power and jumping to compensate for the absence of an injured compatriot Lazaros Papadopoulos in the three-second zone. In the attack, Antonis more often cruised along a three-point arc (hitting three times from afar!), And boldly tore under the shield when throwing, having won as many as four rebounds.
“Dynamo” undoubtedly won the debut and had to increase the advantage, but failed an incredible number of penalties. And after the break, the guests were the first to break the precarious balance, thanks to seven Schumpert points in a row, who left in the gap. Moreover, Tyes Eddie, the MVP of Euroleague-99 and the Eurostars match, held in Moscow in the same 99th, woke up from hibernation. The veteran remembered how crossovers are made, and time after time he went with a warm knife into the oil of the Dynamo defense, forcing Dusan Ivkovich to temporarily seat the confused Boyan Popovich on the bench. When Belinelli’s success, realizing a couple of branded shots with a deviation, was added to Dynamo’s troubles, the situation became tense.
To Ivkovich’s honor, the timeout taken 6.01 before the siren at 61:68 on the scoreboard radically changed what was happening. An entirely different team came to the site, biting their teeth at the opponent in defense and gladly began to devour the difference in the score. The most hungry here was Travis Hansen, a couple of "three rubles" in a row through the hands of his guardians turned the gap into nothing, and the confidence of the Italians into confusion. The ball of Preston Schumpert at the last second of one of the attacks was a misunderstanding - the next time “Klimamio” replenished his personal account only 24.5 seconds before the end, when the free-kicks Ednie actually did not solve anything.
Comparison in character (later called by Ivkovich “very, very, very large”) with Dynamo by that time was lost outright.
Nikolai TSYNKEVICH