Why it made Trinchieri mad: freaking Bayern miracle in an emergency / News - Basketnews.com

Credit: D. Repečka/BasketNews, Imago images/Kolbert-press - Scanpix Credit D. Repečka/BasketNews, Imago images/Kolbert-press - Scanpix

"Coach, I don't know if the result was unexpected, knowing that Panathinaikos have no interest in..." the experienced EuroLeague TV journalist Dora Panteli started the question during the post-game interview until Andrea Trinchieri interrupted her.

Free throws this season

80%12,8Points made:12,8Accuracy:80,0%Place in standings:7Record max:24Record min:2Most made FTs:Vladimir LucicTeamEuroLeagueStatisticsSchedule

"Why unexpected, sorry?" the Bayern coach was surprised by the statement.

Panathinaikos Athens just beat FC Bayern Munich at home 80-67 on March 22.

Panathinaikos were at the bottom of the EuroLeague standings with no theoretical chance of making the playoffs. Bayern were placed in the Top 8.

"Oh, you look at the standings?" Trinchieri continued when the journalist mentioned the standings.

"What could you have done better?" the journalist reasked immediately.

"Fight COVID better, for example?" the coach replied, clearly not very happy with the question.

"Congratulations to Panathinaikos. And I'm happy that they won an unexpected game," he said and left.

Trinchieri is not the easiest coach to deal with when it takes a post-game interview after a loss.

But considering the conditions that led Bayern to this game in Athens, it was a painful question for Andrea Trinchieri.

BasketNews tells a story of the "unexpected" events Bayern faced this emergency season.

***

"How are you doing?" Vladimir Lucic texted Daniele Baiesi, 46, the other day.

Bayern's sports director was not feeling well dealing with COVID-19. He got a fever. His head and back hurt badly.

Lucic replied. He also was concerned about his team being off for too long. It's impossible to build something going through like this, Lucic said.

"Yes, but it's better now than at the moment when you can't reschedule games, and you lose these games which you can't play," Baiesi replied.

Lucic agreed. But he admitted that the whole situation was depressing.

FC Bayern Munich / Schedule

FC Bayern Munich Crvena Zvezda Belgrade82-57 Fenerbahce Istanbul FC Bayern Munich81-76 Anadolu Efes Istanbul FC Bayern MunichWed17:30 Real Madrid FC Bayern MunichFri18:45

"Lucha, if you're depressed, we can all pack up our stuff and go home. Because we're going nowhere," Baiesi responded.

"No, no, no, we're good. We're good," Lucic calmed down.

"I understand the frustration. But at a certain moment, you have to turn your frustration into anger to fuel your motivation. That's why I take stuff as it is," Baiesi explained in an interview with BasketNews.

"I also have a personal history that led me to this approach. I didn't choose this approach. It just came naturally. When you go through some health issues, you don't decide how to react. You just have to react. I lost 35 kilos. I started to eat better, not have bad habits, stuff like that. That's how you decide to use your time," he added.

Throughout the past few years, Daniele Baiesi developed a daily running habit. This season taught him to create a habit of overcoming significant challenges on a daily basis.

The most recent one was the third covid outbreak in the last six months.

The game against Panathinaikos in Athens was the first for Bayern Munich after the self-isolation.

The third Covid cluster left them with only four healthy players days before the trip to Greece.

Bayern played Panathinaikos on Tuesday, March 22. The rest of the group got out of the quarantine on Friday, March 18. In Germany, the 7-day self-isolation is mandatory. That means that on the 8th day, you can apply for medical checks.

The medical checks for the heart and lungs are lengthy, taking almost the whole day. Tests were scheduled for Saturday and Monday morning.

After getting some players from the hospital on Monday, Bayern flew to Athens on a commercial flight and practiced in OAKA at 19:30.

They went for a short 20-minute half-court practice. Some guys didn't even break a sweat. Bayern couldn't afford to have a single five-on-five practice before the game. Just 4-on-4 in the best case.

Some players still had health issues that delayed their return.

"And what are you going to do? Do you expect them to go up and down full speed, and bam, they end up playing the game on Tuesday?" Daniele Baiesi, the sports director of Bayern Munich, told BasketNews. "We didn't use one foul in the first quarter of that game. We didn't turn idiots all of a sudden."

"It's just that you're completely out of tempo and rhythm. Out of everything. It's not an excuse. We should have done better, even given the circumstances. But given the circumstances, it's logical that certain things happened," he added.

Credit Imago images/Kolbert-press - Scanpix

Freaking miracle

There's no such thing as a rhythm for Bayern this season.

Bayern had covid clusters three times during the 2021-22 season. Three times, for God's sake!

The first one was on the eve of the season. The second Covid wave hit Bayern in February. The last one came at the end of March.

Some players got Covid twice in a span of a few weeks. There were cases when the same person had Delta at first, and in two weeks, he was tested positive again for Omicron. The pandemic also sidelined the entire junior team.

One problem was chasing another.

For example, when Bayern's top scorer Darrun Hilliard returned after a knee injury that sidelined him for more than three months, he got coronavirus after four practices.

Nihad Djedovic was getting back after his rehab and was ready to go. But three days before the game he was supposed to play, he was tested positive.

At least twice the whole coaching staff, except one person who didn't get Covid yet, was out due to coronavirus. Trinchieri got himself in a situation where not only he couldn't coach the game, but he couldn't even run the practice.

It's incredible what kind of mess we had to go through since last June," Baiesi told BasketNews.

It all started with Paul Zipser and the emergency surgery for brain hemorrhage. It took him 271 days to rejoin Bayern's lineup.

"Everything was pretty new for him. It's like reinstalling the machine's operating system," Baiesi recalled.

Corey Walden skipped the preseason because of a hamstring injury. Othello Hunter was also sidelined for a month.

Just before the season, Bayern had a coronavirus outbreak.

Some players had a hard time recovering from it. For example, Bayern's key player Lucic was out for more than a month.

"Honestly, I still don't feel good," Lucic said to BasketNews after returning to Kaunas, five weeks from the covid outbreak. "Covid left some consequences. The breathing is different."

Credit D.Repečka/BasketNews.lt

Leon Radosevic, another essential rotation player for Andrea Trinchieri, couldn't return to the floor much longer than expected.

After ankle surgery in July, he had a bacterial infection that forced him to stop and delay his rehab. Eventually, it took three months longer than expected.

Bayern started the EuroLeague season 0-4. Due to the foreign player limit in the German league, Trinchieri had to rely mostly on 5-6 main roster players who played heavy minutes.

Augustine Rubit was the only Bayern player who didn't miss a single EuroLeague game this season.

Delayed returns, new injuries, and two more Covid outbreaks jailed Bayern in an exhausting circle of never-ending problems.

And some of these challenges were way bigger than basketball.

When Nick Weiler-Babb, one of the best defenders in the EuroLeague, hit the floor hard in a BBL game on March 2, things got serious.

"When I went on the court and saw him bleeding from the mouth, I thought he was dying..." Baiesi recalled. "He still has headaches. He still can't sleep at night. You can't mess up with the head..."

In a normal season, Bayern losing to Chemnitz by 19, Wuerzburg by 20, Oldenburg by 31, and Bonn by 35 would raise many eyebrows.

But this whole picture changes the perception of an "unexpected" result.

"There are a lot of teams that are having problems. You have to build confidence, and all of a sudden, you start losing pieces along the way. And you go on the court, and you lose," Baiesi said.

"I feel really bad because it's frustrating for a coach not to be able to do what you've been thinking of for months. It's a spile. Because the coach gets frustrated, he gets on the players, players' confidence gets hurt, and stuff like that. You can't get out of it. Somehow you don't see the light in the end because you don't see the end of the tunnel," he added.

"I don't make publicity of our problems. We solved our issues internally. To me, the fact that we are where we are, considering everything that happened to us... Is a freaking miracle. Considering what we went through, it's really a miracle," Baiesi revealed.

Credit Christina Pahnke/Euroleague Basketball via Getty Images

The identity of Bayern

Currently, Bayern rank second in the German league and 8th in the EuroLeague. And that's where the part about the expectations comes from.

Last year Bayern became the first German team to qualify for the EuroLeague playoffs.

They were super competitive in the playoff series vs. AX Armani Exchange Milan and pushed them to the ropes with the decisive game 5.

People quickly took it for granted, although at least 12 EuroLeague teams (including Russian clubs) operate with a bigger budget than Bayer this season.

"For us, the biggest mistake is to expect things. That's why I think the question that was asked to Andrea was stupid," Baiesi recalled. "Because we're not that club."

"On a personal note, making the playoffs is the reward for the work you put in. Like last year it was. I think we did a great job. But I know that our club and our coaching staff, players, and everybody in the organization did a great job regardless of the result," Baiesi points out. "I'm not dying for the short-term results. As a manager, my work is to plant the seeds of trees that we may see growing in the future. That's why you navigate through adversities right now with the awareness that things are going to get better despite all of that."

"Everybody talks about the playoffs. But playoffs, no playoffs... Results no results... The result is the outcome. As the manager, you have to focus on the process," he added.

"Of course, you have to look at the results and the outcome to make corrections to get better. But unfortunately, in my career, I have lost way more games than the ones I won,"Baiesi, who previously worked for Biella and Brose Bamberg, said BasketNews. "I'm familiar with navigating through adversities. It's just a positive attitude that your experiences give you. So I'm not going crazy because I've lost the game. I try to look forward every time because that's where our club will be."

"Watching the NBA franchise rebuilding, which means losing 50-60 out of 80 games, you try to understand how crises and losses are handled. To me, it's normal to try to take what happens today and turn it in our favor tomorrow. Sometimes you can do it, and sometimes it just doesn't work," Baiesi explains. "There's no one truth. There are a lot of circumstances, and you have to accept the circumstances, not function on absolutes. The fact that we lose today doesn't mean we do everything wrong. The result of today's game is the measurement unit of our performance now. Not of our performance in two months."

Baiesi worked in Brose Bamberg from 2014-2017. When the EuroLeague started a new era and changed the regular season format, he printed out the history of the Fenerbahce basketball club and put it on the door in the front office.

"It took them 17 years to make it to the Final 4," Baiesi explained. "They didn't make the playoffs every year despite huge investments, which we are not making. We're nowhere close to what they did. It still took 17 years to get there. And that's how you grow."

"It's never linear growth. There are always setbacks in growth. Last year nobody expected us to overachieve, and we overachieved. This year maybe people expected us, and guess what? We're in the mix," Baiesi told BasketNews a couple of days before Bayern clinched the playoff spot. "To me, it's important to be in the mix. To me, it's important that wherever we go, people start saying okay, these are the guys who do this and that. But it takes time to develop that kind of culture and identity."

Credit imago images/Eibner-Scanpix

Bayern became a desirable destination on the EuroLeague map.

Like any German club, they're very disciplined with the money they spend, and you will never get into uncomfortable situations like it sometimes happens in the South or East.

In the past few years, Munich has been ranked as one of the best places in the world to live.

Many head coaches are intrigued by any potential openings in Munich since it's the club with a clear vision and operates on long-term goals.

Due to the complicated tax system in Germany, Bayern can't offer mega salaries like they do in some other regions. But everything else is of the highest quality over there.

Daniele Baiesi is also happy that there's a good sense of continuity in his organization.

"The question is how coherent you're with the environment around you. I think in our case, there is clarity. There is a very strong bond between our GM (Marko Pesic), myself, and the coaching staff. We know that we have to go point C, and we're at point A. And we all know that we have to go through point B. There's no other recipe."

As Baiesi feels, this critical value for any team didn't change in Munich whether his team was winning or losing.

"One big lesson that is very much underestimated, that we all should get from Zalgiris, is what they said when they were losing. I don't know how it is right now, but I really learned something," Baiesi told BasketNews.

"When they made the Final Four in 2018, they had a hell of a team. They had the EuroLeague MVP before it became the EuroLeague MVP. They had Brandon Davies and Kevin Pangos. Even the ones who were role players, they overperformed," Baiesi said.

"But two years after, they lost nine games in a row. They came to Munich. I remember Saras telling us: 'Look, we are missing open shots. We're building open shots, but we're missing them. There will be a moment when this shit will turn around, and we will start making.' Unfortunately, this happened the day when they played us," Baiesi smiles.

"Later in one interview, Zalgiris GM Paulius Motiejunas said: 'Okay, we won together, we lose together.' That's what building identity and culture take," Baiesi added.

"Having this kind of sense of togetherness, no matter what happens from now till the end of the regular, even if we lose every game and we don't make it. It shouldn't be us pointing the fingers because that's not going to take us anywhere. It's the same people who took us last year to heights that the club never reached," Baiesi said before clinching the playoffs spot.

Credit Imago Images/Nordphoto - Scanpix

Baiesi quotes world-famous actor and producer Anthony Hopkins.

"He said: I'm who I am, and I do what I do. I accept everything and expect nothing. And these things make my life a lot easier," Baiesi quoted him talking about patience. "I agree with him."

"Expectations... I understand the fans' perspective. But I'm not a fan. I have to be rational. That's what we're expected to do. To be rational. To be rational means you can't lie to yourself, and you have to be honest in diagnosing the problem and then offer solutions. If you let your emotions take over, you know... I insist people do not understand because, in our case, they were misled by our performance last year. Which I get it. But I know I'm very aware of who we are and what we do," Baiesi said.

"You're not going to change who you are because people have expectations. Expectations are based on facts. People outside don't know the facts. They don't know what we know from the inside. That's very simple."

NBA type of challenge

On their way to the second consecutive playoff appearance, Bayern already went through many struggles. But their crazy journey continues.

They had two games scheduled in two days: on Friday against Crvena Zvezda Belgrade and on Saturday in Oldenburg against EWE Baskets.

The EuroLeague match was decisive. Before the game in Munich, Crvena Zvezda still had chances to advance to the playoffs, and Bayern were one of their direct Top 8 rivals.

"We decided to live with the risk of basically dropping one game," Baiesi admitted. "Of course, the priority was the EuroLeague games. We go to play to win every game without saying. But we'll have a rotation in a team that never played together. God knows what's going to happen."

That's what happened.

They left no hope to Crvena Zvezda 82-57 and secured the Top 8 spot. The next day, Bayern sent the junior team to Oldenburg, except for three main team players in, Nihad Dedovic, Andreas Obst, and Paul Zipser, who barely played against the Serbs. Bayern lost by 31 (75-106).

This week, the Germans face a three-game road trip in five days.

They played against Fenerbahce on Monday. They're facing Anadolu Efes on Wednesday and Real Madrid on Friday.

Due to the outrageous charter flight prices, they took commercials. Oh, and after the late Friday's game in Madrid, they're heading to Frankfurt for Sunday's BBL game.

Now they're using games to return to game shape. They don't have time to schedule five-on-five practices the way they travel. They practice in games.

"It's another challenge how we'll rotate the personnel. How do we use, underuse or overuse the players we have. It's a challenge. It's totally new for everybody," Baiesi said. "Everybody talks about how NBA is bullshit here and there. Okay, now we have a stretch like they did. Let's see how we measure ourselves with that kind of stuff."

"Just the main difference between Europe and the NBA is the pressure, physical tension, and effort overall. The intensity of the game. Sometimes people there don't even sweat for the first 40 minutes of the regular-season game. In EuroLeague, the first possession of the game is like the last one. Inevitably, with 34 games opposed to 82, the approach is different. They're saying in their slogan that every game matters. That's the main difference," Baiesi explained in detail.

"Of course, it's an enigma for coaches how to rotate according to the team's needs. Try to preserve the health of the players. If you have 18 guys, then you can play. When you have 10, it's a different thing. The budget has an impact on all aspects. How you travel, how deep your roster is, and how balanced your rotation is between Friday and Sunday. What's the load you demand from your players. These aspects of the situation are like unchartered waters up to the certain extent that is new for everybody," he added.

Turning adversity into motivation.

In a situation that might leave depressed even the toughest ones, Bayern found their inner strength to go through.

Only the time will show where Bayern will build up from that.

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