ImageCSKA: Evgeny Pashutin’s team is 1:2 now, and they could easily stand at 0:3 had it not been for Victor Khryapa’s difficult buzzer beater in Athens. I don’t believe this is about neither the hole on the 4/5, nor about the stars’ alleged decline.

Trajan Langdon is more agile than ever, Ramunas Siskauskas should not have declined significantly in just six months [in early May 2009, he gave us a worthwhile performance in the Berlin Euroleague Final Four], and JR Holden’s current problems are not his decline in fitness. It’s the fact that he’s basically uncoached, taking crazy shots like in his pre-Messina-days.

A few years back I watched a young CSKA roster shortened by injuries to three superstars – Theodoros Papaloukas, Ramunas Siskauskas and Matjaz Smodis – travel to Vitoria-Gasteiz for a Euroleague first round game versus TAU. TAU was a force back then, unbeaten at home in the Euroleague for more than two years. CSKA played just with four foreigners, as they do today. It was a masterpiece of coaching and execution from minute one onwards. Messina played Anatoly Kashirov, Andrei Vorontsevich, Nikita Kurbanov, Artem Zabelin [all two years less experienced than today] and old Zakhar Pashutin for significant minutes, CSKA ran away with an early lead, every one of the youngsters contributed, and TAU could never got it close. I fail to see this determination and most importantly this discipline on the current CSKA team. At the same time, we see it on the current Real Madrid team.

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