31 years ago, Real Madrid (Spain) and Snaidero Caserta (Italy), and their star players Dražen Petrović and Oscar Schmidt met in the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup. The game footage has survived, so has a decent boxscore, but it’s possible to do more. Therefore, I will take you through the game with clips, descriptions, an advanced boxscore and shot charts. Enjoy!
Setting the scene a little bit, Real Madrid had finished second in the ACB in 87/88 and signed superstar Dražen Petrović in the summer to compete with Barcelona. In the league, they couldn’t overcome their rivals, losing the fifth and decisive game of the ACB Finals 85–96, but in the Cup Winners’ Cup, they couldn’t be stopped. In the semi-final, they beat Dražen’s former team Cibona Zagreb to advance to the final. Snaidero Caserta had finished fourth in the Serie A1 in 87/88, but won the Italian cup and therefore qualified for this competition. Their superstar Oscar Schmidt had turned 31 the month before the final and averaged 35.6 PPG in the Italian league in 88/89. They beat Sabonis’ Žalgiris Kaunas in the semifinal. Real Madrid and Snaidero Caserta had met twice before that season, both taking one game. Real Madrid won the first leg of the quarterfinal group stage games 109–92, and Snaidero Caserta edged out a 95–94 win in the second leg. Real went 5–1 in that round, Snaidero Caserta 3–3, so the Spanish team was probably a slight favorite for the final, which was played on the 14th of March, 1989 in Athens, Greece in front of 12,000 spectators.
Play-By-Play
Both teams start the game off well. Johnny Rogers scores the first basket for Real Madrid. Snaidero Caserta give the ball to Oscar Schmidt for their first possession. The Brazilian takes one dribble and finishes a tough right-handed hook shot through contact to tie the game at 2 apiece.
Real Madrid seem to play a 3.5-out offense; 3 guys behind the arc, one on the free throw line and one inexplicably standing directly on the three-point line. So far, the spacing is not great. Gauging the offense of the Italians has not been possible yet, because their shots have come rather quickly. Nando Gentile jogs up the floor and pulls up from three immediately. That would probably have been frowned upon in the NBA in 1989.
At the other end of the court, Real Madrid run Dražen off a screen. He receives the ball, then an on-ball screen, and pulls up for a long two. Oscar, the roll-man-defender steps up and contests the shot. I’ve seen about 11 games of Oscar’s career and had the impression; if he tried on the defense, the game really mattered. Dražen misses the shot, but it’s good to see both stars are already in the game.
It’s not only Snaidero Caserta. Both teams are looking for quick shots. Dražen beautifully maneuvers his way through the defense, goes into a floating jumper motion but passes out of it at the last second for Johnny Rogers’ second long two-point jumper. Real Madrid has taken four shots so far, all of them within 2 feet of the three point line (which was located 20.5ft away from the basket in FIBA competitions at the time), only one has been a three. Sorry, Daryl.
Nando Gentile, father to former Minnesota Timberwolves second-round pick Alessandro Gentile, has been the most visible player of these first few minutes. Dražen turns the ball over, Oscar misses a 1v1 on the fastbreak, dell’Agnello misses the putback, but Gentile is there for an offensive rebound and a tough and-1-finish.
Both teams are setting a lot off-ball screens in these early stages of the game. Both teams seem to have variations of a play that has two men crossing paths in the paint, one sprinting to the three-point line, the other to the top of the key.
We’re probably still in the first five minutes of the game, but Johnny Rogers has already hit four long two-pointers, all with one foot on the three-point line, so it’s time to learn more about him. He attended college at Stanford and UC Irvine, was drafted 34th by the Sacramento Kings in 1986, played 69 NBA games, and then left to go to Europe, playing in Spain, Italy and Greece from 1988 to 2004, winning EuroLeague in 2000 and 2002 with Panathinaikos. He must’ve enjoyed Europe since he played until he was 40.
Score-keeping is a bit of an issue so far. Rogers hit a shot with both toes on the line; the commentator called it a three, the scorekeepers a two. Then Oscar hit a long jumper with both feet clearly inside the three-point line; the announcer called it a three, the scorekeepers (apparently) awarded a three as well. There’s a lot of issues with video-assisted refereeing, but it’s good for something.
There’s a stark contrast between this and the contemporary NBA game. NBA teams averaged 6.6 threes per game in 88–89. Snaidero Caserta and Real Madrid are 6–6 from three and we’re still in the first 8 minutes of the game. Johnny Rogers keeps hitting jumpers as well. Oscar closes out badly, Rogers goes by and hits his fifth midranger jumper of the game.
The shot charts tell an interesting story so far. Snaidero Caserta has taken 10 of its 14 shots in the paint, Real Madrid only 2 of their 14. Still, the Spaniards are in the lead, because they’re 9–12 on jump shots, 4–5 on threes. They’re not stopping either. Rogers hits his 6th midrange jumper in a row, and then Gentile hits a deep three right in Dražen’s face. This is madness!
Dražen sure does draw a lot of attention. He quite often has to pass out of jump shots because the defense collapses on him so hard that he’s defended by three guys and someone else is wide open. Petrović and Oscar are both outstanding to watch, but for completely different reasons. The Croatian is a magician, the Brazilian is an unbelievable shooter (Dražen is too to be fair).
Neither team’s defense is particularly inspiring, but they’re also just hitting every shot so far. Real Madrid also does a nice job moving the ball to get the open shot. Here, Fernando Martin passes out of the post when Oscar jumps (too early), and his brother Antonio gets an easy layup. We’re somewhere in the middle of the first half and Real Madrid has 13 assists to Snaidero Caserta’s 4 (the definition of an assist which I’m applying is probably a bit stricter than the one NBA scorekeepers in 2020 use. When a player gets fouled on his shot, the passer gets an assist in FIBA ball, but I’m not going to universally apply that rule, but rather decide for each play individually whether the passer deserves an assist).
Oscar has quietly kept the Italians in the game. He hasn’t completely taken over the game like he did in the second half against the US at the 1987 Pan-American Championship, but he’s hit a three here, some free throws there and already stands at 19 points, more than all of his teammates combined. Drazen has also been really good, already at 11 points and 4 assists. You can see how much Snaidero Caserta respects his first step, because whenever he appears to be making a move towards the basket, his defender backs up significantly to be able to stay in front of him. Nevertheless, they’ve looked pretty hopeless trying to defend Mozart.
Dražen is slowly but surely taking over the game. Halftime is getting closer, and he’s up to 24 points on 14 shooting possessions. The Italian team not only has trouble staying in front of him off the dribble, they also can’t stay attached while maneuvering off-ball screens. Real Madrid has done a great job getting their star open. He seems to be an intelligent off-ball player as well.
At halftime, Real leads 60–57. Snaidero Caserta has not done a great job defensively, but the Spaniards have also had the necessary portion of luck, converting 10 of their 14 midrange jump shots and 7 of 12 threes. The Italian team is still in the game, however. Partly because Oscar has been good, 25 points on 19 shooting possessions, 11 of 11 from the line, but also because they’ve dominated the rebounding battle. They’re leading 22 to 9 in total rebounds and 12 to 2 in offensive boards. Snaidero Caserta’s Georgi Glushkov, 1985–7th-round-pick by the Phoenix Suns, has been a real distraction on the boards. He already stands at 6 rebounds, 4 offensive, and 10 points, mostly on putbacks.
Start of the second half, Dražen is up to 28, and there’s something going on in the stands. Some people seem to have “broken out” of the stands, and men in dark clothing, presumably police or security, are telling them to get back to their places.
I feel a bit bad for Gentile so far in this game. He’s clearly an outstanding player and shooter, comfortable pulling up from three off-the-dribble (he made 37.7% of his threes on 6.5 attempts per game in the seasons (87–03) that are available in the Italian league’s database), but he, like everyone else on the court, is being outclassed by Petrović.
Snaidero Caserta has tried to throw different defenders at the Croatian, but it hasn’t helped so far. Here, Vincenzo Esposito, the first player the Toronto Raptors ever signed and the first Italian to sign in the NBA, is way too slow on his feet to keep up with the superstar, but Georgi Glushkov has his back. The Italian team gets a rare stop and turns it into a quick two points on the other end.
Oscar is really having a rough time creating separation, not only because his first step isn’t the quickest, but also because the spacing isn’t great, and one or two Real Madrid help defenders can always rotate over to Schmidt when he’s trying to get a favorable shot without leaving their own man wide open. Schmidt is now 4–15 on two-pointers, but his team is still in it.
Real Madrid has gotten a fair amount of easy shots at the rim, so it’s not that surprising to see Snaidero Caserta bust out a 2–3 zone to protect the paint. Dražen, however, is just unstoppable at the moment. With the game still in the early stages of the second half, he’s up to 37 on 24 shooting possessions.
Bringing in Fernando Romay has really helped Real Madrid in the last couple of minutes. The 7-footer has already converted a beautiful feed by Chechu Biriukov, grabbed a rebound and blocked two layups. No wonder he was the ACB’s all-time leader in blocked shots until 2016.
Snaidero Caserta has to try everything to contain Mozart. Now they’re attempting a 3–2 zone and collapsing hard on Dražen. They’re at the point where they’re allowing open three pointers for Real in order to keep the Croatian from the paint. This is a pretty funny freeze frame, the result of a 3–2 zone.
The zone hasn’t gone away. Occasionally it’s a 3–2 zone, at other times it’s a 2–2 zone with Oscar playing man-defense on Romay. So far, Real Madrid has struggled scoring against this zone. They’ve been getting the same type of shots they were getting all night, open jump shots, but they’ve stopped falling for now. Snaidero Caserta was down more than a dozen points at some point, but they’re now clawing their way back. This is a pretty impressive mid-air dime by Franco Boselli. Gentile finishes, bringing the Italian team within 5.
Then, a three-pointer by Oscar brings the lead down to two. 91–89 Real Madrid. Dražen has 42 points on 26 shooting possessions, Oscar Schmidt has 38 on 31 shooting possessions. Both teams have plenty of talent, but it’s very obvious who the superstars are.
After the shootout in the first half, both teams have cooled down quite a bit. Real Madrid is not getting desirable shots anymore, and Snaidero Caserta is getting shots in desired locations, the paint and from three, but they’re usually highly contested and tough.
With the lead down to 1, Snaidero Caserta switches back to a 2–3 zone, and Real continues to struggle getting good shots. Luckily for them, Johnny Rogers, who missed his last three shots after making his first six, bails them out with a tough contested midrange jumper. 100–97 Real Madrid.
Well, this is sort of discomforting. The broadcast has the players at different point totals than I do even though I’m 99% certain that I haven’t missed anything. One thing the broadcast and my boxscore do agree on is that Dražen is up to 51 points. The main source of offense for the Spaniards has been his ability to draw fouls. He’s 14–15 from the line at the moment. 102–99. We seem to have entered the last minute of the game. And with the game on the line, the ball goes to Oscar. WHAT A SHOT! Oscar hits his sixth three of the game, tying the game at 102 apiece.
And on the other end, Dražen commits his third turnover of the game. We’re going into overtime.
I’m not going to show any clips from the overtime period(s), I want you to watch it yourself. Go ahead! It’s at 1:26:00 in the video. I’m going to summarize play below the video, so don’t spoil yourself.
Like the rest of the game, overtime was a demonstration by Dražen, who scored 11 of Real’s 15 points and finished the game with 62. It’s very impressive just how spry he still looked after 40+ minutes of play. He truly was a step ahead of everyone the whole night. Another winner of overtime was Spanish PG José Luis Llorente. The 112-time Spanish international hadn’t played at all in regulation but received his chance when Biriukov fouled out one minute into OT. He then delivered two crucial assists to Fernando Martin and helped his team prevail. Nando Gentile tried his best to keep the Italians in the game while all of his teammates fouled out (Esposito, Oscar, then Gentile himself, then Glushkov). He converted some incredibly difficult three-pointers, but it wasn’t enough. Real Madrid are the winner of the 1989 European Cup Winners’ Cup.
ANALYSIS
Very important note: I don’t claim these stats to be 100% correct. I did a lot of this at 3 AM, so I probably made some mistakes because of tiredness, especially with the shot charts (the shot charts templates are also of NBA courts, so the dimensions are a bit off, but that shouldn’t be an issue).
- Snaidero Caserta dominated the rebounding battle. Real Madrid made more shots, but Gentile, dell’Agnello and Glushkov worked hard on the glass to secure their team extra possessions and easy baskets. The fact that they only shot 20–41 on paint shots when they had at least five easy putbacks is pretty astounding.
- Real Madrid’s play was clearly more team oriented. The assist numbers tell the story well. The Spanish team moved the ball and created some beautiful possessions in the process.
- It’s very interesting that both teams already attempted ~30% of their shots from three. Sure, the NBA line was further away, but NBA teams averaged a 3PAr of 7.4% in 88–89. A remarkable difference. For reference, in 2019–20, NBA teams, on average, took 38.2% of their shots from three, EuroLeague teams 40%.
- The minute distribution on both teams was quite interesting as well. Snaidero Caserta coach Franco Marcelletti had four starters basically play the whole 45 minutes, and Esposito in the game until he fouled out. Real Madrid coach Manuel “Lolo” Sainz Marquez played three starters for almost the full game but eventually had to replace Biriukov with Llorente after the former fouled out. Rogers was in foul trouble early, then replaced by Pep Cargol, and eventually picked up his fifth foul. Antonio Martin was not in foul trouble and (I believe) played the whole first 22 minutes. Then he was replaced by Romay, who made an immediate impact, and occupied the center position for the rest of the game.
- These shot charts tell an interesting story and serve as an exhibit for why context is so important in basketball. Snaidero Caserta (right) took shots from favorable locations, threes and layups, and limited their midrange jumpers to those of Oscar Schmidt, one of the greatest shooters in the history of basketball. But a lot of these shots were highly contested, especially those in the paint (those also include some tough hook shots), which is why they only shot 20–41 there.
- Real Madrid (left) achieved almost perfect balance, attempting between 22 and 27 paint shots, midrange shots, threes and free throws. A lot of these two-pointers within two feet of the three-point line might look bad to the modern fan, but once you get past stage 1 of understanding analytics (let’s call it the “midrange bad” — stage), you’ll realize that midrange shots are fine if you make them at a high percentage. Real Madrid’s 15–27 (55.6%) is outstanding efficiency. When Snaidero Caserta packed the paint, their jump shooting saved the day and the title. Like every champion ever, they also had a decent portion of luck. Not every night will you, no matter how good you are, convert 27 of your 49 (55.1%) non-paint-shots.
The MVP: Dražen Petrović
A few months before signing with the Portland Trail Blazers, Dražen Petrović delivered one of his greatest ever performances on European soil, adding a second European Cup Winners’ Cup trophy after winning it with Cibona Zagreb in 1987. He also led them to two European Champions Cup titles in 1985 and 1986. In this game, he proved that he had become too good for the competition in Europe. Dropping 62 points on 81.6% TS and scoring 11 of Real’s 15 overtime points on such a big stage is just unbelievable. He not only excelled on the ball, he also did a fantastic job moving off the ball, keeping the defense on their toes at all times. In fact, Snaidero Caserta adjusted their defensive strategy multiple times, mainly to prevent the Croatian from getting to the basket. With the rim better protected, Petrović found other ways of scoring efficiently, converting some tough midrange and three-point jump shots as well as drawing tons of fouls. I haven’t seen many games from his time in Portland, but how such a talent ended up playing less than 13 MPG is beyond me. R.I.P. Legend.
Stat Explanation (if needed)
AST (LU): Next to the traditional assist stat, “LU” stands for layups (and dunks). The number in the bracket states how many of the player’s assists resulted in layups. Layups and dunks are the most efficiency field goals in basketball, so there’s a lot of value in being able to create them.
Shot Type* (Astd): The “Astd” number next to the shooting stats on paint, midrange and three-point shots shows how many of the player’s successful (!) field goal attempts from that range were assisted on.
TS%: True Shooting Percentage = Points divided by True Shooting Attempts. A three-pointer is a true shooting attempt, so is a two-pointer, an and-1, a three-point foul and so on.
TSA: One true shooting attempt is one possession that ended with a player shooting (what the shot is does not matter).
3PAr: Three-point attempt rate = Three-point attempts divided by field goal attempts. In words, how many of a player’s field goal attempts were threes.
FTr: Free throw rate = Free throw attempts divided by field goal attempts. Rough measure of a player’s free-throw drawing ability (relative to someone’s FGA’s, because drawing 6 free throws while attempting 25 field goals is less impressive than drawing that many fouls while attempting 9 field goals for example).
USG%: Usage = 100 * ((FGA + 0.44 * FTA + TOV) * (Team Minutes Played / 5)) / (Minutes Played * (Team FGA + 0.44 * Team FTA + Team TOV)). Not a great stat, but there’s no better alternative without tracking stats. It attempts to estimate how many of his team’s plays a player used while on the floor.
PTS over AVG: How many points a player scored in this game relative to his season average (PTS this game minus PPG). I thought the season averages would be interesting to some people.
Box Creation: An estimation of how many open shots a player created for his teammates in this game. Might not be a great stat in a one-game sample, but still cool to have.
Credits
- dtrifono 74 and all the other people that have uploaded this game to YouTube
- Justin Jacobs for inspiration in the form of THIS article
- Jacob Goldstein for the idea of an advanced boxscore
- Eustacchio Raulli for pointing me in the direction of coolors.co, which helped inspire the color scheme for the boxscore
- Pearl basket for the stats from that European Cup Winners’ Cup season. I’m very happy that this website exists.
- NBA Shot Charts for the shot chart templates
- Aido for literally creating a Python function to allow me to calculate Box Creation
