Game of the Week: For ALBA and Zvezda, Cinderella story must include win tonight

When ALBA Berlin hosts Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade in the Game of the Week, it could be the trigger for a Cinderella run to the playoffs for the winner.

Earlier this week, the formal announcement that the three Russian clubs in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague had been removed from the standings saw several teams soar up the table. Although it left both ALBA and Zvezda on the outside looking in, both teams can see a path to the playoffs. And it starts with a victory tonight.

Zvezda has the easier path for multiple reasons. The obvious one is because it sits in ninth place with an 11-13 record and trails AS Monaco by one win for eighth place with one fewer game played. And even though Monaco holds the head-to-head tiebreaker between them by virtue of sweeping their regular-season series, both FC Bayern Munich and Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv enter Round 32 with 12 wins, too.

Without getting into the makeup of Zvezda’s schedule compared to other teams, there are two more reasons for Zvezda to believe. Their names are Aaron White and Nate Wolters. Just three years ago, White and Wolters were members of the Zalgiris Kaunas squad that three years ago threaded the needle by winning its last six games of the regular season to go from 13th place – and three wins out of the playoff zone – to clinch a playoff berth in the regular-season finale.

That 2018-19 Zalgiris team won three of its last four games on the road – in Tel Aviv, Piraeus and Madrid – to make history. And while for some it may seem like a fairy tale, White and Wolters are living, breathing proof in the Zvezda locker room that it can happen.

ALBA begs to be included in this conversation, too. The German champs may have a slightly tougher road – with a 9-14 record and five games to play, but its roster has many of the hallmarks of a team eager to go on a season-defining run. It has EuroLeague rookies in Jaleen Smith, Tamir Blatt and Oscar da Silva as well as experienced veterans such as Maodo Lo, Luke Sikma and Johannes Thiemann.

Lo, 29, is enjoying a career season. Smith, last season’s German League MVP, has hit his stride after early-season adjustments to the competition. Sikma is among the league’s top rebounders and remains an all-around threat that few players can guard. And the team has enough other specialists, as well as an unusual playing style, which combined make ALBA unpredictable.

Of ALBA’s remaining games, only one is against a team in the top five and its regular-season finale is against Monaco.

Of course, for either to hurdle the teams in front of them and reach the playoffs, they can ill-afford many other losses, which brings us to their Round 32 showdown. Before falling to top-ranked FC Barcelona earlier this week, ALBA had won four in a row at home. Zvezda, which lost in Barcelona last week, is 4-10 on the road this season and winless in its previous three EuroLeague trips to the German capital.

But as White and Wolters have surely told the rest of the Zvezda roster, which also includes two former champions in Nikola Kalinic and Ognjen Kuzmic, the past doesn’t matter anymore. Now it’s all about fighting as hard as you can and believing until the final buzzer sounds.