The fateful final of the ACB League, so conditioned in the prolegomena on account of the Mirotic case, ended up blessing Barça, who would have said it six days ago.
It was precisely Mirotic, the man who is now leaving (his fate is unknown), the man who had been left at the feet of the horses after his controversial performance in the final four, a decisive agent in the Barça choral performance, a model of cohesion and know how: his had been the MVP of the final.
“I’ve taken a huge weight off my shoulders by winning this title,” Mirotic would later say.
Under the mantle of Mirotic, luck of Jasikevicius extension on the parquet, Barça began to fly over the whites, Euroleague champions who never managed to take the initiative in these playoffs.
(And for that very reason, dozens of fans left the WiZink Center several minutes before the game came to an end: they were aware that Partizan’s European miracle was not going to be repeated.)
“I don’t think it’s the only game in which we’ve shown how unselfish we are. We have shared the ball very well,” Mirotic said to the television microphones. And we have also shown that in this team there is not just one leader, but several. We have several players capable of scoring in decisive moments. This was something very important, knowing that Madrid has a great defender like Tavares. We have managed to prevent balls from entering him. And then, we’ve scored with Laprovittola, Vesely and Satoransky, who score points on wide shots.”
“We always talk about character and the most difficult thing has been getting up after the Euroleague defeat –said Jasikevicius, the Barça coach, with a flushed face–: In the end you have so few opportunities to win titles that you have to go all out. And the boys have done it.
While Kalinic tried to improvise a personalized version of Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight and bottles were uncorked in the Barça dressing room, Chus Mateo, the white coach, sought solace by rewinding to other moments of the course: “We have fought everything. When we reflect, we will see it like this. I give our season a 9.5”.
