Translated material
Moscow rush hour
Four basketball playoff matches will be held in the capital over two days
The semi-final series of the Russian Basketball Championship among men's teams starts today. They are held until three victories of one of the opponents using the “2-2-1” system. If a fifth match is needed to determine the winner, it will take place on the court of the team that took a higher place in the regular Super League championship. On Wednesday and Thursday, the gold medal winner of last year's championship, CSKA, hosts Khimki near Moscow, and on the same days the capital's Dynamo team plays against UNICS Kazan.The schedule is completely inconvenient for metropolitan basketball fans. The “white-blue” matches begin at 19.00, the starting throw-in in the “red-blue” matches will take place an hour later. The home arenas of Moscow clubs are located at a distance of five metro stops from each other, but it still takes about twenty minutes to get to the subway. Those who don’t care who to root for, but just want to watch basketball, will most likely head to the Dynamo Sports Palace located on the very outskirts of Moscow on Lavochkina Street - entry there will be free. The third and, if necessary, fourth meetings will be held on May 23 and 24 in Chekhov and Kazan. The date of the fifth fights is May 27. The dates for the super final series and the competition for bronze medals are from May 31 to a maximum of June 9.
In the CSKA-Khimki series, the army team is the clear favorite. The team is eager to rehabilitate itself in the eyes of its fans for two defeats in the home Final Four of the ULEB Euroleague. “Khimki” will try to provide head coach Dusan Ivkovic’s charges with worthy resistance, but the basketball players from the Moscow region probably understand the difference in class with their opponents and will be more concerned about how to avoid injuries and maintain strength before the series for third place. After all, Khimki has never received a national championship award in its history. Taking into account the fact that the team acquired a number of foreign players in the off-season and during the tournament, third place would be a worthy result, justifying considerable investments.
However, Khimki coach Sergei Elevich, who was the last of the coaches of leading clubs to recognize the need to invite foreigners to maintain competitiveness in the domestic arena, never forgets about home-grown basketball players. A pleasant revelation in the quarterfinal series was the performance of 19-year-old attacking defender Vitaly Fridzon. Having previously played in Tolyatti, he was part of the Russian youth team, and appeared in the Khimki system before the start of this season. Fridzon played for the farm club of the Moscow Region team, which is now in second place in Super League B, and since January he began to join the training of the main team. In the top division, Vitaly appeared on the court sporadically until his finest hour came in the third game of the quarterfinals with Dynamo St. Petersburg. Having replaced Russian national team veteran Vasily Karasev in the first quarter, Fridzon played an excellent match and became the most productive in the team, scoring 19 points. “Khimki”, largely thanks to the successful actions of the young player, won an important victory. After Venezuelan Oscar Torres was injured, Vitaly became a player in the starting five.
The rivalry between the teams in the Dynamo - UNICS pair is expected to be more intriguing. With great difficulty, the Kazan team beat Rostov's Lokomotiv in the first round of the playoffs, and formally the quotes of Stanislav Eremin's team before the start of the semi-finals are lower than those of the "blue and white". But, knowing the ability of the Moscow club to stumble out of the blue, as it did in the confrontation with the modest Serbian “Gemofarm” in the ULEB Cup and in the home “Final Four” of the national Cup against the same UNICS, we should recognize the equality of strength in this pair. One of the intrigues of these matches will be the performance of forward Ruslan Avleev against his former club. He started the season in Dynamo Moscow, then was expelled from there and in the middle of the season appeared in Kazan, where he had already played several years ago.
If in Khimki, which is doing painstaking work to develop its own reserves, an unknown player can suddenly shine, then in Dynamo the picture is the opposite. It is still unclear why the “blue and white” signed a contract with Ivan Shiryaev in February. The widely publicized player, who was sometimes called the “Russian Nowitzki”, played 64 seconds in official matches for Dynamo during all this time. Shiryaev played several matches for Dynamo-2 in Super League B and, according to eyewitnesses, did not demonstrate anything outstanding. In the Dynamo-UNICS games, the maximum density of foreign players allowed by the regulations is assumed - three in each team at the same time and five in the application for the meeting. Moreover, three Americans have passports from European countries: Dynamo McDonald is Slovenian, UNICS point guard Williams is Georgian, and his teammate Clark is Polish.