Ivica Zubac and Damir Mulaomerovic: 'We did a good job on Giannis, but it wasn't enough' / News - Basketnews.com

Center Ivica Zubac and coach Damir Mulaomerovic weigh in on Croatia's efforts to stop Giannis Antetokounmpo in the game against Greece.

Credit: FIBA Credit FIBA

Sometimes, words tend to become figures of speech. In the case of basketball, it's common knowledge that containing an opponent on the court isn't the same as stopping him.

Player of the Game EFF 28 Giannis Antetokounmpo Points 27 Accuracy 9-24 Rebounds 11 Assists 6

Take Giannis Antetokounmpo for instance. The 'Greek Freak' finished Greece's game against Croatia in the EuroBasket opener with 27 points, 11 rebounds and 6 assists for a PIR of 30. On paper and at first sight, no one can say Croatia's defense amounted to anything.

But numbers might not reveal the whole truth. Giannis started the game really slow, missing his first four field-goal attempts in the first four minutes. He was struggling to find some room on the court since coach Damir Mulaomerovic chose to throw Clippers center Ivica Zubac at him. Zubac, a center of 2.15 m, did everything to cut Giannis off.

Despite all his efforts, the 28-year-old Bucks superstar found the way to pass at the right time and set up some screens for his teammates - and Tyler Dorsey in particular. Apart from his 27 individual points, Greece got another 16 off Giannis' assists. Moreover, Dorsey registered a new scoring high of 27 points with the Greek NT, largely thanks to the picks that Giannis set for him.

And, of course, when the game was on the line and Greece were leading by just two (84-82), it was him who stopped Zubac before making a reverse dunk that essentially sealed Greece's win. His last crucial play was a sequence in which he pulled off a closeout defense, then reached out for Jaleen Smith's corner three-pointer blocking the naturalized player's shot, and ran in the open court to score another layup.

Before the game, Bojan Bogdanovic said that the only way for Croatia to contain Giannis Antetokounmpo is to get all five players involved. After the game and while passing through the mixed zone at the Mediolanum Forum, Ivica Zubac evaluated his team's overall effort and results.

Damir Mulaomerovic

Position:PG, SGAge:47Height:195 cmWeight:96 kgBirth place:Tuzla, Bosnia and HerzegovinaProfileNewsStatistics

"I feel like we did well. We didn't let him score that much in transition. I think it was OK," the 25-year-old big man told BasketNews.

"But stopping him doesn't guarantee you anything. Greece has a lot of good players, and they made a lot of three-pointers. They're a good team, while we made some mistakes at the end," he added.

Damir Mulaomerovic thinks that "Giannis also made the difference with his energy; he's been the NBA MVP twice. He can't be guarded in open court situations. We were doing a pretty good job on him, but it's impossible to stop an athletic guy like him one-on-one."

Coming up with a solid plan that can work miracles against Giannis seems to be the task of every coach in the EuroBasket, but Greece found another hero in Tyler Dorsey. The naturalized guard, who has signed a two-way deal with the Mavericks, joined Antetokounmpo as Greece's leading scorers.

"We knew Dorsey's game," Zubac continued. "In the first half, we let him get to some good spots and get his shots. He had easy looks, but that's what he does. He's a shooter, and we must get better at knowing our personnel and who we're playing against," he acutely pointed out.

On the other hand, Mulaomerovic thinks his side did (almost) everything they could.

"We missed 16 defensive rebounds. Dorsey hurt us with his scoring high. In the second half, we kind of stopped him, but he still scored some crucial points," the Croatian tactician stressed.

Mulaomerovic believes that the main reason Croatia couldn't finish what they started, faling to complete a full comeback from being down by 19 (24-43) late in the first half, was lack of focus at crunch time.

"We showed that we can do it. In the end, we had no concentration, probably because we were tired. I can't say anything bad about my guys. They played well," he further commented.

"We fought hard against one of the tournament's favorites," Zubac concurs.

"The difference was our first half. If we didn't go down 18 or 19, we would have had a good chance to win this game. We were tired, but we wanted to win.

We fought hard all the second half, and maybe we didn't have that boost that we needed in the final minutes. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if we lost by 5 or 25 points," Zubac concluded.

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