CSKA lost to Khimki in a scandalous ending

Russian Basketball Championship

Yesterday, the intrigue in the final series of the Russian Basketball Championship was revived. “Khimki,” which lost to CSKA in the first two matches and was one step away from defeat, managed to “soak” the score. On their home court they won 67:66 - a match with a very dramatic and very scandalous ending. The army team did not understand why their basketball player Ramunas Siskauskas was not allowed to equalize the score before the siren, allowing him to shoot not three, but only two free throws, and protested the result of the meeting.

The beginning of this match did not foretell a phenomenal outcome at all. Yesterday, for a long time there was a feeling that CSKA would win the series of up to three victories cleanly and take the seventh championship title in a row. In the first minutes he was not very accurate in attack. But he made up for all his mistakes with excellent defense. Milt Palacio and Timofey Mozgov, for example, will probably remember the blocked shots that Viktor Khryapa gave them: after all, he covered the Khimki basketball players at the moment when they brought the ball into the hoop.

And then the army men scattered. Captain Matjaz Smoliš missed the opening match of the final due to injury, but appeared for three minutes in the second. And yesterday I played as if I had not received any damage. After one hit from mid-range and two from long range, CSKA took the lead seriously for the first time - 19:10. True, Khimki survived this breakthrough and pulled closer, getting a real chance to finish the starting period next to the champion. But at the end of the day, the owners lacked the usual accuracy.

Ten seconds before the end of the quarter, they allowed Nikos Zisis to make a simple pass under the basket and score. And Maciej Lampe, throwing the ball in from the goal line, threw it straight into the hands of the sneaking army player Ramunas Siskauskas. So “minus 3” out of the blue turned into “minus 7”.

The game of “Khimki” continued to leave, so to speak, an ambiguous impression. On the one hand, the hosts could not be blamed for their bad mood. They did not at all look like a team that had accepted in advance that they could not cope with the 100% favorite in the final. But at the same time, they still made too many mistakes, and CSKA slowly went ahead - 40:28 at the big break.

What happened to the army team in the third quarter could be called a unique phenomenon, if not for the memories of something similar that happened to them quite recently - on May 3 in the Euroleague final in Berlin. There, CSKA collapsed in the second period of the match with Panathinaikos. Now he suddenly stopped playing his basketball for ten minutes in the match with Khimki. The army team lost this segment with a surprising score for them - 9:22! And Khimki, which had just seemed hopelessly behind, came forward and, more importantly, felt courage, their superiority over their seemingly invulnerable opponent.

In the middle of the final period, Khimki’s victory already seemed inevitable. After Anton Ponkrashov's three-pointer they led 64:56. And the home team’s play - confident, without glitches - suggested that it would be difficult to even significantly reduce this gap. However, CSKA came to life and dealt a monstrous blow to Khimki. A minute and a half before the siren, Siskauskas restored the balance with his long throw - 64:64.

Khimki was revived by their outstanding sniper Carlos Delfino, who managed to score by sneaking under the hoop. Then Siskauskas missed, and Delfino converted one of the two free throws. True, the Khimki fans most likely thought that there was nothing wrong with the Argentine missing once. The score was 67:64 in favor of the hosts, there were three seconds left until the end, and CSKA coach Ettore Messina had already exhausted the timeout limit and, therefore, the army team had to throw in the ball not from the center line, but from the front line.

Ramunas Siskauskas tried to throw it at the same time as the siren in the direction of the Khimki basket, not reaching the center line. He had no more or less real chance of getting in. Nevertheless, for some reason Palacio openly crashed into the army man. Referee Sergei Mikhailov showed that he would shoot three free throws. That is, as much as you are supposed to throw if the violation occurred at the time of the three-pointer. Immediately, Khimki coach Sergio Scariolo attacked the referees, almost getting his second dismissal in the series.

Ramunas Siskauskas calmly made one shot, then a second, but never waited for the ball to hit the third and send the match into overtime. It turned out that the judges decided that Palacio's foul against Siskauskas was committed while still dribbling, as they say. And in this case, you need to shoot two free throws. The guests were not satisfied with the explanation. Five minutes after the end of the game, CSKA announced that it was filing a protest against the result.

The fourth match of the series will take place today in Khimki.

Alexey Kommersant-Dospehov

The army team lost a free kick