First we take Monaco…
It is May 1, 2024, playoff time in İstanbul… Fenerbahçe Beko returns home after splitting the two away games in Monaco for Game 3.
Fenerbahçe Beko: The basketball team of one of the oldest and most popular sports clubs in the country, with a storied history in the League. A permanent fixture in the Final Four between 2015–2020, the 2017 Euroleague Champions. Looking to go back to its glory days under the command of Šarūnas Jasikevičius, who took the helm mid season…
AS Monaco Basket: A relatively newcomer to the league, built around one of the best players on the court, holder of the league’s all time leading scorer title. With a single Final Four appearance in 2023, eager to show they belong…
The drive. Left home at 7 pm for the 8:45 pm game at Ülker Arena. A rare 20 min drive, gave us more than an hour to kill before game time. Because living in this city is about traffic management, first and foremost.
The t-shirt. In our seats by 7:30 pm. Yellow road to final four t-shirts to greet us. The colour is kicking, and the material is soft and thin. Way better quality than the Toronto Raptors t-shirts from way back when. Unwearable with their high collars, and shitty material, still gathering dust somewhere in the closet. There is a curious drawing of the team on the front. Saras is there, and so is Motley, I think, Scottie, almost. It is downhill from there. Why is Dorsey an angel? But most importantly, Who is the dude with golden funky glasses? Questions, questions.
Pre-game. The rosters are up. Motley still out. John Brown, who got injured last game, is also on the sidelines. I like Brown, he was huge in the regular season loss to Monaco. Sertaç who also left game 2 early due to an injury is on the roster (but does not start). The arena audio sound is way too loud. TOO LOUD. And the music is meh. So we rock the headphones and crack the volume.
The refs. They boo the refs at the start of the game. Every game. They know something I don’t? As this unfolds, the refs are not convincing — or convinced — at all, which leads the fans to question every call they don’t like. Which is made worse by the refs questioning every other call they themselves make. I am still not over that bizarre time travel sequence in game 2, where Monaco was awarded the ball after an unsportmanlike foul call for Motejunas from the future, they should really ban time travel on the basketball court. This whole watching, and rewatching, and re-rewatching is butchering the game, and not sustainable or manageable, and inevitably we will have to give the whistle back to the referees and back down.
The game. I did not believe we would win game 1 until we won it. I believed we would win Game 2 until we lost it. This game felt like a W from the start. Yes there were flashbacks in the 4th, but this is home, and this team only lost two home games this season. Crvena Zvezda and Efes. I remember the Crvena Zvezda game, where as we were cheering against Teosodic and his men, I could not help but think that it just was not working, perhaps working against us. Last night it felt just the opposite. The arena was rocking (I read the comments on social media today dissing the Fenerbahçe fans in the arena for whatever, and from our vantage point right at the centre I have to say that is neither fair nor accurate. The fans were engaged throughout, and definitely made a difference. It was definitely a play-off atmosphere. This is an arena where most watches the game sitting down, with only certain sections — the usual suspects up and about all the time… And football jerseys vastly outnumber the basketball ones — I counted only 5 yesterday — Does not change the fact that the fans rocked last night.) The team played well and hard. Calathes, Guduric and Biberoviç were all huge, but I felt, all said and done, Papagiannis made a big difference last night at both sides of the floor. Diallo was the Monaco player that stood out the most, was all over the court and rather annoying. Monaco looked rather tired at times. The inbound alley-oop pass from Strazel to Blossomgame was a thing of beauty (yet I was more dazzled by the defense — or lack thereof watching the highlights). After a defensive breakdown I look to Saras to figure out what went down, as he is seen shouting at the top of his lungs to whomever messed up…. The last two minutes of the game went at a dizzying pace, one crazy sequence after another, I had to sit down for a bit to steady myself at some point. I am a bit hazy about what went down, but in the blink of the eye, Hayes-Davis was running the clock for the game to end, and we could all breathe again.
The jersey. I am a basketball fan, who grew up watching Efes, celebrating the Koraç Cup win on the street with a handful of people, who happened to move to a Fenerbahçe neighbourhood in İstanbul upon returning home. So this is my neighbourhood team now … This season has been mostly about getting to know the team. All season, game after game, there has been one question playing around in my mind. If I were to buy a jersey whose name would I put on it. My brother has a Saras jersey — they could not fit Jasikevičius on it-, which I thought was a brilliant idea, and my son who can still count his age using his two hands wants a Wilbekin- which only makes sense… But whose name would I put on my jersey… I really like this team, and would wear any number of the players (Biberoviç if I was younger, Hayes-Davis if he had not dropped 50, Papagiannis if I was trying to make a point, Pierre if he was able to stay on the court longer, Motley if I was taller…) but here we are. And there is one name I came to associate with this team more than any other — and that is Nick Calathes. I am not buying a jersey, just yet.
Post game. It took us around an hour to get the car out of the arena, a price we were willing to pay for waiting to cheer for the team after the W. Home in 15.
The day after. We re-watched the second half on Euroleague TV. It’s been a while since I rewatched a game that I have attended, was surprised to see how different the two experiences could be, especially for an intense playoff game. Your logic and your emotions stack up differently in each case, tipping you off slightly, landing you in surprisingly different points, both of which might be equidistant from the truth of things. The Euroleague commentary was rather enlightening, making me realise that we beat a terrific, great, Herculean Monaco team with a single terrific play (by Papagiannis) and by, well being open.. Quite an accomplishment, I think. Terrific.
