Struggling Milan Looks to Regain Momentum with Nikola Mirotic’s Return

Nikola Mirotic returned yesterday to play a Euroleague game two months after the last time we saw him dressed as a short. The Achilles tendon, that part of the body that already gave him problems while at Barça, has now kept him in dry dock for eight weeks. Bad news for any European basketball lover, since the Spanish-Montenegrin is one of the biggest stars in the competition. With Mirotic on the court, Milan hopes to straighten out a compromised qualifying situation that, however, they still have time to fix. The Italian team is 13th with a balance of 10 wins and 14 losses, but the implementation this year of the play in to determine the last two places in the playoff means that teams that in other years were almost hopeless for the qualifying rounds for the title now continue to have the excitement to arrive. Milan is one of them, since it is two wins away from ninth and tenth (Valencia and Partizan), the last two places that give access to play in. With ten games still to play, nothing is impossible.

But Mirotic’s return and, therefore, what could be the turning point in the Italians’ season, came at OAKA in Athens, against a Panathinaikos team that defeated him ruthlessly (79-62) and that right now looks like one of the best teams in the championship, as Ettore Messina himself recognized after the match: “Panathinaikos, along with Real Madrid, are the two best teams in Europe. The way they play on offense and defense, the energy, the crowd… It’s like old times. You have to be mentally strong when you come here. You are going to score fewer points and you are going to be uncomfortable.” After starting 2-4, with many doubts in the game and in the selection of the quintets, Ergin Ataman seems to have found the key and his subsequent record is 13-5. What’s more, he has won nine of the last eleven games. Bad place therefore to recover tone and sensations. And yet, Mirotic’s match was pretty good given the circumstances. The power forward played only 15 minutes, but he had time to score 11 points with 40% accuracy on three-pointers, grabbed 2 rebounds, received 3 fouls and finished with a PIR of 7.

It is normal that Armani Milan misses Nikola Mirotic. Anyone who has seen him play will understand this and the statistics confirm it. Although right now he does not appear in the general table of Euroleague statistics due to having missed half of the games that have already been played, his numbers place them among the best in the competition for another year. He is fourth in points (17.1), ninth in rebounds (5.8) and eighth in offensive rebounds (2.2), tenth in fouls received (4.2) and fifth in efficiency (18.6).

A good day at the office for Juancho

Mirotic’s game, quite productive, was the opposite of the general performance of his team, which was swept off the court from the first quarter. At halftime they were already down by 16 (44-28) and the disadvantage reached 24 (74-50). The 4/21 in triples of the Milanistas left little margin of victory. “We did not put up resistance. Our performance, our mood, were embarrassing. I apologize to the owner and the fans. We started out off and missing layups. We didn’t know how to stop Lessort from scoring and rebounding, or Juancho on the perimeter. We will talk and correct the mistakes,” Messina admitted. Juancho Hernangómez had one of his best days in a season that is not being easy. After shining in the first two games of the season, especially in the debut against Olympiacos (13 points, 10 rebounds, 2 blocks and 25 PIR in 43 minutes), he has lost a lot of prominence. Apart from a fracture in a finger that kept him without playing for more than a month, since he returned on December 14, there have been more games in which he approaches irrelevance. Yesterday, however, was important in his team’s victory. Especially in the initial takeoff that opened the gap on the scoreboard. In the end he finished with 12 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists and a PIR of 16 in 22 minutes.

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2024-02-01 09:26:20
#Lights #shadows #return #Mirotic