The 2023 EuroLeague Final Four was left behind with a great cup game. It’s time to take a closer look at the organization where Real Madrid won its 11th championship…
For the first time since 2014, we watched a EuroLeague Final Four that did not include a Turkish team. Fenerbahce Beko’s fifth away match against Olimpiakos marked the end of the nine-year streak. Of course, the last four, created by Real Madrid, Barcelona, Olympiacos and Monaco, had their own stories. Real Madrid, which turned the Partizan series down 2-0 in an eventful way, Barcelona, which seems to be the favorite in Kaunas under Sarunas Jasikevicius, regular season winner Olimpiakos and Monaco, which was among the four teams for the first time… We remember the rest of the adventure of three days and four games.
Didn’t Happen Again
Sarunas Jasikevicius is one of the most respected figures in European basketball history. After four EuroLeague victories and countless other successful acting careers, Saras started coaching at Zalgiris Kaunas and gained attention by doing a lot with a small budget. In particular, he crowned his coaching career in his country by carrying the humble Lithuanian representative to the Final Four in 2018. Barcelona adventure that started after; So far it hasn’t been bad, but it lacked the most important win: a EuroLeague victory. Kaunas was an important target for Saras’s Barça, who lost to Anadolu Efes in the 2021 final and Real Madrid in the semi-finals in 2022, for two reasons: Efes, the champion of the last two years, who could not even make the playoffs, was out of the equation and with the influence of Jasikevicius, Kaunas was an important target for Kaunas. they could have had a support like playing at home. But Barcelona threw in the towel early into the Final Four, losing against their arch-rivals for the second year in a row. Moreover, this time Madrid has a lot of shortcomings and much less hope… Now it seems that the Barcelona adventure has come to an end for Saras. The legendary name will wait a little longer in his coaching for the trophy he won four times in his acting.
Basketball City
Kaunas is not one of the popular tourist destinations in Europe. But Lithuania’s second largest city, which gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, is one of the continent’s basketball capitals. The city, which has produced career players such as Arvydas Sabonis, Sarunas Jasikevicius, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Sarunas Marciulionis, is also known for its huge support for its team Zalgiris Kaunas. Unsurprisingly, it’s full of basketball hoops and you can hear the sound of a ball bouncing around every corner. The fact that it has the Zalgirio Arena, one of the halls with the highest occupancy rate in Europe, makes this city with a population of more than 300 thousand a natural Final Four candidate. On the other hand, the limitations of transportation opportunities to the city, the number of hotels and social environments are also details that can be written on the negative line. Kaunas, the host of the 2023 EuroLeague Final Four, left this organization behind with its sins and merits. It should be said that despite some conditions that are far from ideal, a good result has emerged.
