Talking about the best Real Madrid of the Laso era are big words, but that was the qualifier that the Whites approached in the first part of the season. Until mid-January, the whites had a balance of 16 wins and only one loss in the Endesa League. Almost perfect start that was reminiscent of the 2013/14 campaign (a 17-0 then) and that has been cut short since Barcelona’s visit to WiZink. A defeat that marked the beginning of the end for Laso’s men, who have since accumulated four defeats in the ACB, all against their own fans, as well as falling in the Cup final and losing the lead in the Euroleague along the way.
A full-fledged crisis whose causes are diverse and you have to look for them long before that first defeat against the Catalans.
a hellish calendar
The refrain for the accumulation of games is already common in the world of the basket, surpassed the teams by a calendar to which they do not stop adding games after the expansion of the Euroleague. This means that the teams hardly have time to rest, something that everyone has known since the beginning of the season and that is no excuse. They have lived with it for a long time. The problem for Madrid is that that already loaded calendar became hellish due to the pandemic. The postponements due to the coronavirus derived from the sixth wave designed a very complicated start to the year for the whites, with very long trips and hardly any rest days. For example, before the Copa del Rey, the team had to face Valencia Basket, Fenerbahçe, Barcelona and Unicaja in just one week. A very hard marathon from which they came out very bruised.
Barça kryptonite
Shortly before that week, the whites had received Barcelona in the midst of euphoria. At that time, Laso’s team had accumulated 23 victories and a single defeat since the end of October, with an almost immaculate career that had only been broken by the visit to the Palau in the Euroleague on December 10. Well, Jasikevicius’s men left the WiZink happy again, choosing a new classic on their side and putting one more stone in the backpack with which the whites now come to play each classic. With that defeat against the azulgranas, the second of the course, began a league streak that has already accumulated four disappointments in a row at home for Madrid. Never seen throughout the long history of the white club’s basketball section. In the midst of this debacle in the ACB, there was also sadness over the Cup final, also lost against Barcelona. Goodbye to the first big title of the season.
The calvary of injuries
Shortly before the Cup, the Whites lost Carlos Alocén for the entire season due to torn knee ligaments. Goodbye to the season that joined a long list of ailments that has affected almost all the players in the locker room. Those who have remained healthy throughout the season can be counted on the fingers of one hand. To this misfortune of the Spanish point guard was added already in the Cup the loss of talker -Several weeks of absence await him-, leaving orphaned a very important position for the coach. He had to reinvent himself, with the hole in the point guard position, and that has not been digested well by the team for now. As the coach himself snapped at his players in a timeout against Zalgiris -bottom player in the Euroleague against whom they fell with a crash after the Cup-, they are still in depression and looking for solutions.
meeting again
Since the Cup final, the Whites have played two games and both have ended in defeat. “It’s a screwed up situation, because I don’t like losing,” acknowledged the coach after losing to Baskonia on Sunday. The sixth loss in nine games. The fourth in a row at home. Whenever his figure on the bench seems untouchable -he has the support of the board-, he has to look at the field to find the causes of the team’s mutation. The arrival of new pieces, such as the incorporation of the injured Thompkins and Randolph or the signing of Deck, the ecosystem to which the team had become accustomed at the start of the season changed. Laso’s effort to get these players into dynamics – who should be important in the team’s short-term future – has hampered performance at times. A toll that should pay off from now on. Both Randolph and Deck are gradually improving their numbers and that is what grabs the white basket, which once again has a complicated schedule ahead of it. Today they play in Belgrade against Red Star (7:00 p.m., DAZN) and on Thursday Sergio Rodríguez’s Armani Milan visits the WiZink. Two complicated duels that can serve to leave the crisis behind or to worsen it even more.
