ABA League – Final - Day1

Crvena Zvezda – Partizan: A special level of rivalry

The rivalry and animosity between Crvena Zvezda and Partizan are among the greatest in European basketball. For the third consecutive year, the eternal rivals from Belgrade will face each other for the ABA League title. The finals create a special atmosphere where the visitors feel like they're in hell. The arena is packed with far more people than its capacity allows, and the pressure exerted from the stands on the opposing players and referees is immense. It often takes being 10 points better as a visitor just to have a chance at winning a match. This is the main reason why hosts in the ABA League finals have won 23 games in a row. It's been six years since a visiting team won a game in the final series. And it will be extremely challenging to change that this time. Last year, Partizan won the final by 3-2, while the year before, it was 3-2 for Crvena Zvezda. Clearly, there were no breaks.

If we focus solely on basketball (although it's very difficult in this series), Crvena Zvezda enters the finals in better form. They comfortably outplayed Mega in the semifinals and have been gradually improving over the past two months. Crvena Zvezda will not play their home games in the Stark Arena but in the Aleksandar Nikolic Hall, which has a capacity of 8,000 people. Despite selling 12,000 season tickets, they decided to change the venue for this final because the Aleksandar Nikolic Hall is much more acoustically challenging and creates significantly more pressure on opponents. This season, it's 3-2 for Crvena Zvezda in head-to-head matchups across all competitions, and the red and whites have won three in a row. In those games, Partizan had no way of defending the pick-and-roll with Milos Teodosic. Defending the pick is the biggest weakness in the black and whites defense, and it's almost impossible to defend a 2-on-2 pick with any center because Frank Kaminsky, Bruno Caboclo and Balsa Koprivica can't do it successfully. Partizan has had the most success with small-ball lineups when Zach LeDay played at center because everyone could switch, but it's not realistic to expect those situations except in the final minutes of games.

Partizan had certain problems against Buducnost in the semifinals but found their way to the finals. James Nunnally and Kevin Punter found a good rhythm, Aleksa Avramovic recovered after missing a layup for the win in Game 2, and Jaleen Smith and Mateusz Ponitka anchor Partizan's defense. The biggest weapon is certainly head coach Zeljko Obradovic, who is the most successful European coach of all time. However, even he hasn't found a way to outplay Crvena Zvezda away from home in the ABA League finals in the past two years. Based on everything written, Crvena Zvezda to win is probably the most realistic scenario to start this series, although it might be even safer to expect a game with fewer than 166 points. At this stage of the season, exceptional defensive intensity is expected, and in a match with such tension, it's not realistic for both teams to score more than 80 points. Crvena Zvezda has a way to slow down Partizan's offense, and the visitors will likely send a third defender to defend the pick and force distance shots from the hosts. Since there's a lot of nervousness present, it's possible that shooting percentages won't be the best, which is an additional argument that we'll see a match with slightly fewer points than usual.