Game of the Week: 'El Clasico' says it all!

How many reasons can you possibly need to watch a game of basketball? Because Friday night's showdown at WiZink Center has them in bucketloads.

For starters, it's a first-against-second meeting of the top two teams on the continent, with the honor of topping the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season standings at stake.

Before the game even starts, one icon of European basketball will be saluted; when the action begins, another will have the chance to reach a major historical milestone. A bunch of players will be going up against their former team – including the league's best performer so far this season, who will have his birthday cake either topped off with a delicious cherry or smashed into his face.

There are individual and collective scores to settle, high-quality matchups all over the court, injury absentees to overcome, a coaching clash of strong characters on the sidelines.

Oh yes... and it's El Clasico, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, two of the most famous and heralded sporting organizations in the world.

Doesn't sound too bad, does it?

Barca have very much enjoyed the better of this famous old rivalry in recent times. As well as winning both of last season's EuroLeague meetings while also beating Real to a domestic league and cup double, head coach Sarunas Jasikevicius's men also won the December's EuroLeague clásico at home – meaning that Pablo Laso's Real has to win by 14 points tonight to claim head-to-head advantage – and savored a feisty Spanish league road victory in Madrid less than three weeks ago.

The main man on many of those occasions was Nikola Mirotic, who leads this season's EuroLeague in points and performance index rating as he turns 31 today. As he returns to the arena he called home for six years at start of his career, Mirotic is likely to be regaled with a few chants tonight...but the lyrics probably won't be 'Happy Birthday to You'.

If anyone can stop Mirotic, who took the league's MVP award in both October and December, it could well be the man who received that honor in January. Guerschon Yabusele was already performing very well before he joined Real last summer – that's why they signed him, after all – but he has truly found a new level in an outstanding first season in the Spanish capital. The head-to-head duel between Mirotic and Yabusele will be one of the biggest keys to this game.

Another big battle comes at point guard, where two players are going up against their former teams, as Real's Thomas Heurtel puts his creativity to the test against the long-range shooting heroics of Barca's Nico Laprovittola. And if that's not enough, we can also witness a showdown between two of European basketball's greatest players this century: Real's Sergio Llull and Barca's Nick Calathes, who needs just seven assists to overtake Vassilis Spanoulis as the competition's all-time leader in that category.

Both coaches are having to deal with significant absences, with Real missing recent re-signing Gabriel Deck and one of its best defenders, Jeffery Taylor, while Barca has seen Cory Higgins join Alex Abrines and Pierre Oriola on the sidelines.

Replacing those missing men is something else for Laso and Jasikevicius to ponder. But prior to that, a few minutes before tip-off, there will be a short ceremony to salute a man who knows El Clásico as well as anyone. Former Real captain Felipe Reyes has been named a Euroleague Basketball Legend, and the tribute to him is sure to send the home fans into the game with a warm and noisy glow.

And that feel-good factor will be a necessary boost for Laso's team, who are suffering their toughest spell of the season with a series of setbacks culminating in an historically poor performance in Tuesday's loss at Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul, where Los Blancos scored just 17 points in the first half.

The team's top performer on that otherwise disappointing night, as he has been on many occasions this season, was Walter Tavares, who leads the league in blocked shots and two-point shooting accuracy and ranks second in rebounding and PIR. The ability – or lack thereof – of Barca bigs Brandon Davies and Sertac Sanli to unsettle and contain the giant Tavares is another tasty side dish to look out for.

Mirotic on his birthday against Yabusele; Calathes chasing down a major milestone; Heurtel and Laprovittola with a point to prove against former teammates; Tavares and Llull looking to guide Real back to winning ways; Reyes receiving the adulation of the home crowd; Laso and Jasikevicius locking horns on the sidelines with first place up for grabs...

It's a potent and potentially explosive cocktail, but such is the depth of talent on display tonight at WiZink Center that the key contributions could well come from none of the aforementioned talents. Rudy Fernandez, Adam Hanga, Vincent Poirier, Kyle Kuric, Dante Exum, Rokas Jokubaitis...they and several others are also more than capable of making a major mark on this latest instalment of El Clásico, a game with so many talking points it's impossible to do them all justice.

Now, if all of that doesn't tickle your taste buds as the perfect way to head into the EuroLeague's only bye week of the season, you probably just don't like basketball.