Translated material
Different paths
Khimki and Dynamo St. Petersburg will compete for a ticket to the final
The Final Four of the FIBA European Cup starts tomorrow in Kyiv. On Friday, two Russian clubs will meet in the first semi-final - Khimki near Moscow and the current trophy winner (last season the tournament was called the FIBA Euroleague) Dynamo St. Petersburg. The second pair was made up of the Spanish “Juventud” and the host of the competition, BC “Kyiv”.The tournament in its current form has existed since the fall of 2003, and Russian teams have won it twice. The first title was won by UNICS, which won the home Final Four; a year ago in Istanbul, basketball players from the banks of the Neva celebrated success. Moreover, in both cases, the quartet of the strongest participants included two of our clubs - UNICS was accompanied by the Perm Ural-Great, and the St. Petersburg team, as this time, ended up in the semi-finals against Khimki. Of course, the clause in the tournament regulations, according to which when two teams from the same country advance to the Final Four, they are paired up and sort things out among themselves on the first day, is considered quite controversial.
True, with the current rule there is one plus - the Russian team is guaranteed a place in the final. This means that the clubs of our country have already achieved a unique achievement: in at least five of the six European tournaments this season they became participants in the finals. This is the capital's Dynamo in the ULEB Cup, Khimki or St. Petersburg Dynamo in the European Cup, Ural Great in the Challenge Cup, girls from VBM-SSAU (Samara) in the Euroleague and Spartak near Moscow in the Women's European Cup.
In the upcoming Final Four, Russia will be represented by teams with completely different histories and development strategies. St. Petersburg Dynamo was created just a year and a half ago, practically from scratch, through the efforts of Vladimir Rodionov, a famous basketball philanthropist who also had a good command of the art of coaching, who moved to the banks of the Neva from Saratov. Immediately becoming a super club, by Russian standards, of course, Dynamo began to experience financial problems within a year, and the upcoming matches could become the swan song of the “blue and white”.
“Khimki” is developing along a completely different path, and, probably, it is the right one. At least the club is firmly on its feet and insured against a sudden decline into oblivion. “Khimki” will only turn ten years old in January 1997, but the team has already gone through all the levels of the hierarchy of Russian basketball, and under the leadership of one coach - the founder of the club, Sergei Elevich. His players began to play in the third tier of the national championship - the first league, and the team bore the very prosaic name “Khimki-Giprosvyaz”. Even then, the new team was attracted to itself by the atmosphere reigning in it. It is no coincidence that Russian national team player Sergei Bazarevich, who at some point was left without a foreign contract, did not shy away from playing several matches for Khimki in the lower division.
Elevich's team quickly stepped into the elite and received the right to play in the Korac Cup. In the Super League, the Moscow region club was considered a “black sheep” for five seasons - unlike its main rivals, Elevich did not consider it necessary to use the services of foreign legionnaires. The bet was placed on home-grown personnel, and Khimki, with such an “unfashionable” approach, was twice able to enter the top five clubs in Russia. The task of getting into the medals still required reinforcement by the Varangians, and in the summer of 2003 Khimki’s personnel policy changed. But not to the detriment of the education of the reserve - two more club teams, consisting entirely of young Russian talents, play in the lower divisions of the national championship.
In the final Super League championship, St. Petersburg and Moscow Region basketball players shared the points, winning their home matches - 71:69 in Khimki and 81:69 in Northern Palmyra. The teams had to play each other eight times last season - in the regular season, in the quarterfinal playoff series and in the FIBA Euroleague. The score of these meetings is equal - 4:4, and the opponents “exchanged pleasantries”: “Khimki” did not allow the “blue and white” to the semi-finals of the Russian championship, and the St. Petersburg team, in turn, did not give Elevich’s players the opportunity to play in the main match of the FIBA Euroleague.
As for the pair “Juventud” - BC “Kyiv”, there is no favorite here either. The Spaniards are in an honorable fourth place in their championship, four wins ahead of the famous Real Madrid, which made it to the playoffs of the ULEB Euroleague. The Kyivans have the advantage of their home country, but in recent days the team has been overwhelmed by an epidemic of injuries, and three leading players have dropped out of action. BC "Kyiv" is an international team. In addition to Ukrainians, Serbs, Americans, Bosnians, Croats, Macedonians, Israelis and even Brazilians play here.