Partizan – Mornar
ABA league Round 1
Belgrade, October 2, 19:00 CET
Partizan enters the new season in the ABA League and Euroleague with an even better team than the one that played, according to many, the best offensive basketball in Europe in the previous season.
Mornar is currently acting as an ideal opponent for the Belgrade "black and whites" for the official opening and start of the season in front of their fans, in the same week that Partizan will play in the European elite.
It is expected that over 15,000 fans of the legendary coach Željko Obradović's team will be in Belgrade Arena. The biggest strength of this squad is the fact that the key players are already entering their third season of playing together. So it is expected that Partizan will be more organized and ready for the different challenges during the match, than all rivals in the ABA league.
The "backbone" of the Partizan team are Americans - famous shooting guard and team's captain Kevin Punter and power forward Zach LeDay. But also, domestic players like playmaker Aleksa Avramovic, behind whom there are great performances for Serbia at the World Cup, center-forward Alen Smailagic and the returner to the club, guard Ognjen Jaramaz. Each of them is ready to play defense at elite European level.
New players make the Partizan team better compared to the previous season: forward from Poland Ponitka is a great fighter and reliable shooter, as well as American guard-forward Dozier and player with rich NBA experience, stretch center Kaminsky.
Against all rivals, especially at home, last season Partizan insisted on a fast game with a large number of shots in the first five seconds of the attack. Mornar, on the other hand, always performs precisely with the desire to play the match at such a pace. In such a situation, we will probably see a match in which both teams will have over 70 shots!
In the last check before the start of the season, Obradovic's team was defeated by Euroleague rivals Bayern Munich 99:95 (September 24). How Partizan plays in front of their fans is best evidenced by the matches they played in June against the biggest rival Crvena Zvezda in the ABA league's final series. In all three games, the home team scored at least 87 points. And Mornar is defensively a much worse team than Zvezda.
The Montenegrin team Mornar is significantly weakened compared to the previous season. In the qualifiers for the FIBA Europe Champions League, they were defeated by the average Spanish team Obradoiro 90:56, in a match played last week on September 26 in Antalya, Turkey. In the last five matches, this team has received at least 90 points.
Last season, in January, Partizan routinely beat a weakened 92:74 Mornar team, which was significantly better then than they are now. In April 2022, it was 95:83 for the hosts in Belgrade... Now an even more powerful and dominant edition of one of the best teams in Europe is expected, especially when it comes to attack.
Even though it is a match against outsiders, the Zeljko Obradovic team will, due to the great support of the fans in the first match of the season, feel the obligation to play the entire or almost the entire duel at the highest level.