National Basketball League: the sad night in which the giant Atenas de Córdoba fell to the canvas and did not get up

There are seconds left for the end of the fifth and last game of the series for the permanence of the National Basketball League (LNB). Raúl Pelorosso, of good work, drives the ball in the offense of San Lorenzo. The kid Matías Station, with already glazed eyes, runs it to all sides. The sports robert pando delirious with a shower of ‘ole’. The youth from Atenas de Córdoba commits an offense and walks (and limping, because he still has sequelae of the injury to one of his ankles that he suffered in the second game and suffered recently) towards the substitute bench, sits down and does not hide her crying. Octavio Sarmiento, another kidney youngster from the club, is also distraught. His team no longer has a chance to win and the future is complete. Moments before the play that closed the duel 73-62, the thousands of fans of the Cyclone raved to the rhythm of “the one who does not jump went to B”. The image is more than eloquent: The Greek is the greatest champion in history with nine titles, the only one who has played all 38 tournaments since 1985 and, until this Tuesday night, the saddest in its history, the one who had never been relegated.

The Cordovan team did not stop being first class in this match. Not even in the previous two that he won at the Sports Center Carlos Cerutti. . . . Not by Stanic, Vine either maximum araujo, the other youth squad who rose to the occasion in the most difficult series of all and with the heaviest shirt. Athens was relegated because, with a limited budget and the focus on finishing building its stadium, it missed the sporting path from the beginning and never got it back on track: it did not hit the right spot with the foreign players, it had four coaches – it started the tournament with Claudius Arrigoni and they continued Sebastian Gonzalez y Elian Villafane before the arrival of Alvaro Castiñeira-, and in some games, he was defeated. That combo led to the worst regular season of his existence with five wins and 33 falls, 23 of them in a row.

The last one-on-one game against the team from the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Boedo was the one that, taking into account the away games, played the best. At first, Castiñeira’s team was not intimidated by the hostile context in a stadium that began to vibrate with the duel an hour before and which was a pressure cooker -as in the first two chapters, tickets were sold for 115 pesos and the public exhausted them in a while-. However, he failed at key moments and the locals closed the first quarter better and, later, the first half with a Federico Marin (21 points, 8 rebounds and 4 assists) decisive especially when the Raven could not find answers.

In the plugin, the Greek collapsed little by little and never found a way to stop the 41-year-old forward, the key to permanence for a San Lorenzo that maintained the category, never having triumphed as a visitor because he lost the 20 games he played , 18 in the regular stage and the two in the play out. His story forced him to fight until the end, even when the situation had no return. And he did it, with his head held highout of respect for their fans who traveled 700 kilometers from Córdoba to the City of Buenos Aires, even knowing that it could be a day of great anguish, but also one of excessive joy.

In those sympathizers there is sadness, logic. There are those who applaud the team and they are the majority, those who cry and those who contain the players. Among them is Hector Campanaa glory of the institution that in 1997 shone in the squad that played in the McDonalds Championship and was about to face the Chicago Bulls of Michael Jordan. ‘Pichi’, who gave his support to the players in a training session in Córdoba before the duel, experienced the match in the front row of the stalls and was stoic.

This Athens has only the name of the teams he formed, but it is still “his” Athens and that of Marcelo Milanesio, German Filloy, Leonardo Gutiérrez, Leandro Palladino, Carlos Cerutti, Fabricio Oberto, Diego Osella, Walter Herrmann, Juan Espil and Bruno Lábaque, to name a few. Also, the club that won the Pan American Championship in 1996 and the one that won three times in the South American Club League. In short, the biggest in national basketball.

For the Greek the third was the charm. In the last five seasons, three times, including this championship, he had to play the play-out to maintain the category. He broke free twice, the third time no longer and the person responsible was another ‘big’ of the LNB who has accumulated just eight seasons and was champion five times. In fact, San Lorenzo is the only five-time champion in history and together with Peñarol de Mar del Plata it occupies second place in the table of top winners behind Atenas. El Ciclón is the team that marked the history of the competition in the last decade with, in addition to national titles, two Leagues of the Americas and friendly matches against NBA franchises such as the Toronto Raptors and Cleveland Cavaliers and the Spanish giants Real Madrid. and Barcelona.

These will be difficult days in Córdoba and it will be difficult for Athens to pass the bad drink, the most bitter in its 85 years of existence. However, they have many arguments to quickly return to the elite, although the path in the Argentine League does not look like a bed of roses. In the club, its own president, the highly questioned Felipe Lábaquepredicted the sports debacle and, before the series against Cuervo, had made it clear to THE NATION that they will aim to return as soon as possible: “We are going to participate and we are going to put together a team to return within a year.”

The Greek played, taking into account the play-out series against Ciclón, a total of 43 games of which he won seven and lost 36. As a visitor, they could only beat Unión de Santa Fe on the second date of the regular season, in which they he ranked last with a record of five wins and 33 losses. In turn, he went 23 matches without knowing the victory, the most important losing streak in 38 years of participation in the elite. His best moment was three consecutive alegrías on dates 32, 33 and 34 against San Martín Corrientes, Unión and Oberá de Misiones, all in the Sports Center Carlos Cerutti.

Throughout the championship he had four different coaches. It started Claudius Arrigoni and left after seven losses in eight games. Sebastian Gonzalez, a big name in the competition, coached just seven games and said goodbye without smiling at the summer break. The post was taken Elian Villafane, who during 10 duels also failed to guide him to victory. Finally, he took Alvaro Castiñeira with Villafañe as assistant and the results improved, although not at the level of the institution: 18 games with six wins and 12 losses.

According to data from the LNB, From his debut until relegation, the Greek played 1,858 games with 1,141 wins and 717 losses for an effectiveness of 61.4%., high for a sport in which there are only winners and losers. Only in the playoffs, his data is even better: 315 matches with 196 cheers and 119 falls.