Barcelona 2003: A long-awaited title

May 23, 2013

It was a pleasure for me to watch and comment on the action for the first time with the Euroleague website from our courtside seats behind the basket with Euroleague.net editor-in-chief Frank Lawlor. FC Barcelona appeared to be a team of destiny that season. They signed the best European player in Dejan Bodiroga, added talented veterans like Gregor Fucka and Patrick Femerling to go along with two younger and, at that time, still title-less and unique players in Sarunas Jasikevicius and Juan Carlos Navarro. (Both happen to be playing in this year's Final Four too!). They were coached by Svetislav Pesic, a tough, no-nonsense disciplinarian.

Barcelona had another advantage going for it because the Final Four was being held in their town. There were 16,000 fans that packed the arena that weekend. However, there was also one huge psychological disadvantage that must have weighed heavily on them, and added an enormous amount of pressure. It was the fact that Barca had never won a Euroleague title. Even though they had such powerful teams in the past and reached the title game five times previously, there was always something that stood in their way, like those strong Jugoplastika teams, or some amazing play like Vrankovic's famous blocked shot.

The other teams that made it to the Final Four – Benetton, CSKA and Siena – were clearly underdogs in my book, compared to Barcelona. CSKA was a young team that actually was ahead of schedule at that time, according to their experienced coach Duda Ivkovic. Both Benetton and Siena were solid teams, but the truth was that no one could really match up with Bodiroga.

In the final, Benetton, coached by Etore Messina, stayed close throughout the game, and forced FC Barcelona to play its best basketball. Tyus Edney, a former Euroleague champion with Zalgiris, continued to put pressure on the Barcelona defense by scoring and setting up his teammates, but in the end it was Bodiroga who just took the game over with some help from the "young guns", Navarro and Saras, who made a couple of clutch three-pointers. Another player that was key to Barca's success was Rodrigo De la Fuente, a solid defensive player who was also a scoring threat. I enjoyed seeing the Barca players celebrating with their fans after winning the title, because I knew that they had worked hard and truly sacrificed that season to become the 2003 Euroleague champs.

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POSTED BY

Johnny Rogers - Euroleague.net

DATE:

Wednesday, May 02, 2012