FC Barcelona delivered some brilliant basketball during the opening months of the season, regularly dominating even the strongest opponents to finish the regular season atop the standings en route to a return to the Final Four.
Season in review: FC Barcelona
Biggest win
A rematch of the previous season’s championship game was staged in December when Barcelona traveled to Istanbul to face Anadolu Efes in Round 13. It was a thrilling game that eventually went to overtime after an 80-80 tie and the visiting team edged the additional period partly thanks to a three-point play from Rokas Jokubaitis inside the last minute. Sertac Sanli was the top performer, scoring 24 points on 9-of-11 field goal shooting against his former team, while Nikola Mirotic reached his usual high standards with 18 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists as Barca gained a measure of revenge for its defeat in Cologne.
What if?
Timing is everything: Barca was clearly the best team in the continent throughout much of the season, but how you finish is more important than how you begin, and the campaign came to a disappointing end with a bitter sense that Coach Sarunas Jasikevicius’s men had peaked a little too early. The Final Four defeat to archrival Real Madrid had been preceded by losing the last two games of the regular season before a struggle to get past FC Bayern Munich over five games in the playoffs. Perhaps as a result, by the time Barca reached Belgrade, it looked as though collective energy levels had dipped, and the Blaugrana fell well short of their best basketball as they suffered a semifinal defeat.
He’s got next
Rokas Jokubaitis continued his upwards trajectory by winning the Rising Star Trophy with an excellent first season in Spain. Having previously established himself with hometown team Zalgiris Kaunas, the 21-year-old point guard left Lithuania to reunite with Coach Sarunas Jasikevicius and settled quickly in his new environment to average 7.1 points, 1.6 rebounds and 2.6 assists over 37 appearances – with perhaps the greatest tribute shown in his average of nearly 17 minutes on the floor. And Jasikevicius wasn’t the only play-caller to have faith in Jokubaitis, as the competition’s head coaches came together to vote him the best young player in the EuroLeague.
Impressive numbers
Barca was ranked near the top in many performance metrics on both sides of the ball, leading the league in assists per game (18.4) and three-point shooting accuracy (40.1%), as well as holding opponents to the lowest number of offensive rebounds per game (20.9). Barca’s all-around efficiency and team ethic were best reflected in a remarkable and rare collective display in an opening-round 96-64 thrashing of ALBA Berlin, in which all 12 players scored at least one basket and grabbed at least 1 rebound, and nine different players dished at least 1 assist.