Before FC Barcelona bench boss Sarunas Jasikevicius leads his team to Belgrade for the Final Four, he sat down to discuss what makes his team tick.
Sarunas Jasikevicius, Barcelona: 'It will be a very difficult matchup'
Interviews
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This time last year, the common narrative around the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Final Four was that Anadolu Efes Istanbul was poised to fulfill its destiny. The Turkish team had come close in 2019, losing the championship game against CSKA Moscow, and was then denied by the COVID-19 lockdown after leading the regular season standings when action was halted in spring 2020.
So, heading to Cologne, it was widely assumed that Efes would complete its long journey by reaching the summit of European basketball… and so it proved as Ergin Ataman’s men downed FC Barcelona in the title decider to claim a triumph that appeared to be written in the stars.
This year, you could suggest the same thing about Barca: after a few years of disappointment, Svetislav Pesic inspired a big improvement which saw the team ranked joint-second when COVID halted play in 2020. The upturn then continued under new coach Sarunas Jasikevicius, taking his team to that title game against Efes before topping this season’s regular-season standings with two more wins than any other team.
"It’s very difficult to get into the players’ heads and to understand what they feel."
Jasikevicius, however, is not a believer in the theory that now is Barca’s time to complete their cycle: “That’s just people trying to make stories,” he said. “The only reality is that we’re going to Belgrade trying to win the semifinal to give ourselves a chance. That’s it.”
He does, however, acknowledge that last season’s experience should be advantageous as his players look to go one better this time around.
“It’s very important that we went through that situation last year,” he accepted. “The majority of the players are still here, so let’s see. I think it always helps, but there is no guarantee obviously. It’s very difficult to get into the players' heads and to understand what they feel, but we are one year more together. More time to go through different situations as a team and hopefully that helps.”
The semifinal will see a clash between the two teams who know each other better than perhaps any other pair in world sport: Barca and Real Madrid. They have already met on six occasions this season, with Real winning the Spanish Super Cup in September before Barca claimed the next five in a row: twice in the Spanish League, once in the Spanish Cup Final, and twice in the EuroLeague.
With such familiarity between the teams, Jasikevicius admitted it will be almost impossible for either him or Real counterpart Pablo Laso to come up with any tactical wrinkles to catch their opponent off-guard: “There are less chances for surprises. I’m sure that there will be some, but it’s very difficult at this point to change a lot of things. Maybe one or two details for a surprise, but it’s difficult,” Jasikevicius said.
Rather than worrying about finer tactical intricacies, the Barca boss is more concerned with making sure his players head into the game with the right mental approach.
“You have to understand that it will be a very difficult matchup," he said. "There is going to be a lot of suffering and you have to be ready to suffer against Real Madrid for 40 minutes.”
Jasikevicius has repeatedly been honest enough to admit it cannot be guaranteed that his team will perform at their highest level, ruefully noting that Barca occasionally suffers unexpected glitches when they struggle to reach their best. And he has no explanation for those downturns.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the players," he shrugged. "I’ve been fighting for a year and a half and I accepted it already. I have to fight through it, not fight against it. The worst thing we can do is lie to one another that we’re different. We’re not. It’s been proven that we are in general very, very good, but we are an inconsistent and up-and-down team.”
"There are so many things that go into what you’re trying to teach the players over the course of the year: to be fast in thinking or moving; to be physical."
Jasikevicius was, though, particularly pleased with the efforts of his players in Game 3 of the playoffs series against FC Bayern Munich, praising them for playing ‘simple basketball’. Elaborating on that idea, he explained: “We played as a team, we didn’t complicate things. Very quick passes out of double teams.”
However, he also explained why it’s impossible for any team – not just his own – to execute the things required to make ‘simple basketball’ happen.
“At this point, it’s not so easy to achieve. We set out to do some things and we did them [against Bayern in Game 3], but obviously, you have to do it all the time and it’s not so easy.
“There are a lot of things involved. A lot of stuff going on every game. Opponents throw different things at you, and you’re just not so good sometimes. It’s not easy or everyone would do it all the time.”
With those points in mind, Jasikevicius is reluctant to spell out his basketball philosophy, instead believing that players and coaches have to be prepared to undertake a constant process of evolution.
“There are so many things that go into what you’re trying to teach the players over the course of the year: to be fast in thinking or moving; to be physical. There’s a lot of stuff going on.
“I think we want to play together, we want to move the ball, we all want to be happy. We want to play fast. But the other team is also not so stupid. They will try to prevent you from those things, try not to allow you to play to your strengths or what you believe in the most. So it’s a constant adjustment over the course of a 10-month season. It’s a constant process. You have to make adjustments obviously, because the other teams are very good and they are preparing against you.”
The same is true on the defensive side of the ball, as the Lithuanian coach again underlined the need to be prepared for anything.
“Every team is different,” he said. “Usually we will understand what we can risk and what we cannot risk. You set your priorities and try to work on them, trying to take away the strongest parts of the other team’s basketball.”
Another key aspect of coaching – especially during this decisive phase of the season – is preparing his players to psychologically manage the ups and downs of elite sport, which again cannot come with a simple ‘one size fits all’ approach.
“Not always everybody will be happy,” he explained. “You have to accept that and deal with it in the best way possible.
“There is a mixture between the team chats and little individual chats. Sometimes you need to help somebody out a little bit more, but somebody else maybe you need to leave them alone. We try to juggle it and you have to get help – you cannot do things on your own.”