When it was going on for a decade and a half that “The Surprise Tournament” had remained more of a cliché or an advertising slogan than a reality when talking about the Copa del Rey, lo and behold, the 2023 edition in Badalona has come to revolutionize the ‘status quo’ of Spanish basketball. For the first time since 2009, the champion of the same is not called Real Madrid or Barça. One more item, to find the last time that the whites did not reach the final on Sunday, you have to go back to 2013. The most conservative will defend that this will probably have had some repercussion on the audience for the final —certainly not on attendance at a Badalona Olympic Stadium that was full, after some gaps at the start of the event—, but let me add that this information is a sign of good health for Spanish basketball. No self-respecting competition can boast that it is always won by the same people, no matter how transatlantic sports, economic and social events they may be.
Although it has taken almost three decades to roll again, it is clear that the Cup is a tournament conducive to it. By his own idiosyncrasy. It doesn’t seem necessary to explain that beating a favorite is easier in one game than when you have to knock him out in a ‘play off’ that forces you to defeat him three times in a maximum of five games. All in all, in the vast majority of cases the powerful will end up winning, since they accumulate more budget —in fact, in this Cup, much later, the eight largest economies of the Endesa League entered— and, therefore, better players. So far the truism. But it is true that this tournament has something special, and for me I have to it is impossible to win it without soul, a factor that is not reflected in statistics, that is not paid for with money and that, for such an intense and short event, equalizes forces and can be decisive because it goes where physique or even talent does not. This has been the case on this occasion in Catalan lands.
When you play everything for 40 minutes, you have to be very good to win without spirit. But it can be done: Real Madrid demonstrated it at the start of the tournament, leaving all the doubts in the world despite agonizingly beating a Valencia Basket that hit the post and already warned of what was to come. The whites, predictable, have lacked ideas in the Cup almost to the same level as their point of view has been crooked (they have made 8 of 48 three-pointers and 46 of 68 free throws), but perhaps the most serious thing has been the lack of spirit that Chus Mateo recognized after Unicaja got them off. It didn’t hurt the white coach to admit that he missed Sergio Llull and Rudy Fernández, both injured, in the semifinal, but it was a bad thing for a team to have such an emotional dependence on two players aged 35 and 37 respectively. The worst thing in a white code is that this fact was evident and X-rayed that neither Musa nor the mysterious Hezonja are at the moment the spiritual references that the dressing room needs when doubts come to them. And since the Balearic Islands are not going to be eternal, the Cup has shown that this team will have to think of someone else to play the bugle when curves come in the medium term.
But before Madrid, Barça fell, also against Unicaja. Be careful, this had not happened since 1953, when Joventut dispatched the two soccer giants, and certainly had never happened in the ACB era, which began in 1984. However, Jasikevicius’ men may not have shown as much lack of energy as his eternal rival. In fact, it begins to seem that the excess of spirituality of the Lithuanian coach is gradually irritating his squad in what seems like a complex drift to solve without titles. However, once again in a close finish Nikola Mirotic was not exactly what the Americans call the go to guy, that life insurance to which to give the ball in the face of adversity convinced that something is going to come out. Another fell to Higgins – not a paragon of passion, but usually reliable as a Swiss watch – and Laprovittola, more emotional and in the best moment of his career, solve. They got tails and Barça left the Cup because of the cat flap and with the second title of the season lost. The azulgranas allowed themselves to be overcome by a hungrier rival and ended up paying for it in extra time.
Because although the Unicaja thing, objectively, has to be described as a surprise, it could be said that something could be seen coming. Although they march very high in both the Endesa League and the Euroleague —it would only be missing—, it is obvious that neither whites nor blaugranas live their moments of greatest clairvoyance in the game. So with, allow yourself, some acquiescence from the ‘greats’, this was precisely that Cup in which an overdose of spirit could lead to what ended up happening. It was put on by Marcelinho Huertas, outstanding at 39 years old and who was a hair short of being the longest-serving MVP in history, beating Chichi Creus in 1996. Joel Parra wasted it at home, exceptional for giving life to Joventut in the debut against Baskonia, and hatching like a supernova in the semifinal turning the Badalona Olympic game upside down. The prodigious Catalan forward, no matter how much he was the victim of the iconic stopper by Abromaitis that left the ‘Penya’ without an end, once again showed his candidacy to spend many years at rojigualda and, most likely, as a supplier of that energy that on this occasion they missed the favorites so much. It looks like a drawer.
And since the deficit of spirit in Baskonia, a priori the great alternative of power, was also worrying —Where was plan B when Joventut turned the score around after the break?—, it was Unicaja who hit the jackpot. Because he was the one who played basketball the best, but also the one who most wanted to go through the front door. The soul that the Cup requires was taught by Darío Brizuela, Barça’s executioner with his son in the UCI. Or Dylan Osetkowski, a guy who seems to have come out of ‘Baywatch’ but who has entered Málaga basketball on the right foot, as if he had spent twenty years walking around the beach bars of El Palo. And Jonathan Barreiro, that white blackbird who has now become a worker and who he gave his life in the decisive phase of the final to steal a ball from Gio Shermadini as soon as he scored a triple that already smelled decisive. It was also Tyler Kalinoski, a defensive specialist and notable shooter who, in the opinion of the writer, was the real MVP, for being more regular since Thursday than the award-winning Tyson Carter. And of course it was Alberto Díaz, that ‘hero of the people’ —and of the Eurobasket in 2002— capable of universalize that defending is fun. The lifelong man from Malaga who cried on the parquet in Badalona aware of how bad he had recently had in his life team, whose anxiety in previous years was so enormous that now it is hard to believe what happened in just a few months . but of course the spiritual trickle starts in Ibon Navarro, capable of turning that decrepit Unicaja around like a sock in just a few months. Sometimes the projects, although they require an economic push, also begin with the heart that the coach from Vitoria has known how to touch a fan of Malaga who has spent weeks returning to fill a Martín Carpena that last season, in a match against Casademont Zaragoza, recorded the worst entry in its history.
Because Unicaja, before winning, had recharged the spirit to recover his people as an essential path to success in this excellent and already historic Copa del Rey. And that the people of Málaga lacked Augusto Lima, a defensive reference in the paint and operated two weeks ago on the cruciate ligament of the knee, but now without crutches in Badalona. Well that, the soul. That is not paid and, sometimes, gives titles. Go if he gives them, although not everyone has understood it on this occasion.
