Friday, March 20, 2015

Basketball Impressions: ALBA BERLIN - Galatasaray Istanbul (75 - 68)


What an abomination of a game!

Not really the game quality itself but everything that happened surrounding the game. Who am I talking about? The "fans" rooting for Galatasaray Istanbul.

So what happened, and why am I eligible to say something like the above?
Before the game in the Round 6 of the Turkish Airlines Euroleague's Top 16 between Crvena Zvezda Telekom Belgrade and Galatasaray Liv Hospital Istanbul in Istanbul, a Belgrade fan named Marko Ivkovic was killed on the way to the game. The "fans" of Galatasaray were further on disrespectful and aggressive towards the fans of Belgrade. The consequences for the basketball team of Istanbul were a € 100,000 fine and three home games without any fans in the stands.

And what about the game today?
Nobody was seriously injured, thankfully. But let me show you some videos and pictures of what happened before and after the game in this first post of my Basketball Impressions series, in which I take a look back at the plays and the things that happened before and after the home games of ALBA BERLIN, my club, my love.
So, in this first video, you can see a large group of people, dressing as fans of Galatasaray Istanbul, walking slowly to the O2 World in Berlin. It was around 8 pm when the police escorted the group from one point in the city, that I'm not sure of, right to the entrance of the arena. Everything was looking fine, it seems to had quite some fun, drumming and singing their fan chants. I was amazed that so many fans of an opponent team would come to our house. But you have to know that we have a lot of Turkish people living in Berlin, and many of them are fans of the football team of Galatasaray Istanbul. Take a look here:



So, nothing much happening.

Later in the arena while the warm up was still happening, a small group of Istanbul fans were running through the stands headed for the ALBA BERLIN fan block 212. On their way, in the middle of the VIP block, it came to some fights between some fans. This is when I got my phone out to record what was happening. So they made their way to the fan block 212, grabbing some chairs, and throwing them at the fans and players of Berlin. I saw one or two Berliners having some scratches and wounds in the face, again thankfully nothing too bad but still some disrespectful shit! Then the coach of Istanbul got to the microphone and tried to calm the aggressors. They even argued with the coach... What are they doing?! It's their team's coach, a man you should respect, as he leads the team... Anyways, the people then walked back to their bigger group of Istanbul fans, which were still singing and kinda having fun, managing to grab some banners and flags of the Berlin fans. The security team of the arena was way too overwhelmed with all the action happening everywhere. Soon after that, the police finally came in and pushed the groups back to their seats. But let me say that this was happening way too late. The police was waiting outside all the time with many team cars, so they could easily have come in much earlier to prevent shit happening. The Istanbul fans finally went "quiet" in terms of violence. It was a chaos we have never seen before in this sport in Germany. Watch a 5-minute excerpt of what was happening:

The officials postponed the game to one hour later, which meant the tip-off should happen at 10 pm. Again, something so unusual, since games take at least two hours and it got very late when the final buzzer rung out. The only request the officials made to the fans was that if anything, just a small thing, happens, the game would be canceled. Berlin fans didn't like it. I on the other hand liked the fact the game was still happening, but I would have found it reasonable to throw out the guys who were doing all the shit you see in the video and continue with/start the game. At 9:40 pm the athletes came back out of the catacombs right onto the court and warmed up again. Another thing that bothered me and thousands of ALBA fans, was when the team of Gala went to their fans and clapped in front of them. Why would you applause to a bunch of fucking morons who almost ruined this evening? Whatever. The game started as mentioned before at 10 pm.

Now, how was the game?
This is what this blog series of posts should have been about. Well, you know, you won't see many of the stuff that happened tonight in the future posts. Usually, everything is so peaceful.

Nonetheless, the game was a really good game. ALBA showed off their defensive skills in the first three quarters. Offensively, every player was contributing to the score or by assisting, rebounding, or setting good screens. ALBA was leading the first three quarters with ease. Most of the shots from the mid-range were falling. What I hate to see every game is that we only shot 50 % from the free throw line at the end of the second quarter.

The fans of Istanbul were really loud in the first quarter, when Galatasaray could stay on ALBA's heels. But as soon as shots fell for ALBA in the second and third quarter, the other side of the court went quiet, this time I mean really quiet. In the fourth quarter though, things changed dramatically. ALBA lost its touch in the paint and the mid-range. Nothing wanted to go in. Defensively, ALBA looked dazed. I don't really know why, maybe it was the constellation of players on court. Maybe something else but one thing is for sure, Galatasaray came as close as one point with one three-point shot that was contested until the release and hit the bottom of the net. That one was just beautiful. The arena instantly turned into something really loud. You could feel the vibration of the jumping Gala fans way over where we were sitting and that was almost on the opposite side of the court. But we held against it. And it was crazy, really emotional, and a fun game till the last seconds.

One other thing that left me the impression and gave me the reason why I wrote "fans" in quotes early in this post, was that the "fans" were standing with their backs to the court. They didn't know, didn't want to know, and didn't cared a bit about what was happening in the game. What kind of fans are they? Certainly, these guys had nothing to do with basketball. They even got their shirts off, and danced in a circle of hundreds of people. So damn embarrassing.

So after coming back from the dead, the fans and the team of Istanbul again went quiet after Berlin was knocking down really important shots, and making key steals. These moments were golden. You could hear (or not hear) the frustration in the Gala block. It felt right. And we were happy as hell. The end score was 75-68, ALBA taking the W. 

We soon left the building, we wanted no part with these weird ass "fans" that were then singing even after the game ended and their team lost. Outside, the police was already waiting for them to come out.

Here are the Euroleague highlights of the game and the post-game press conference:




Next game will be against Belgrade on 26.03.2015, which will hopefully be a real basketball game with real basketball enthusiasts. Feel free to give me some feedback as always. Until then, see you guys soon!

Peace and much love to ya,
JerriKoe - #mitleibundseele


Links you maybe want to check out:

Shout-out to Cedric, who reads my posts and points out what typos and other grammatical mistakes I did while writing this. Thanks!

 PS: I want to say this just to make things clear. I really feel sorry for all the real Gala basketball fans that paid good money joining us watching the game here in Berlin. I know many of them are from Berlin, which is kinda cool, but all of them that wanted a peaceful experience in the arena, I hope you had good time watching the game and we can purely talk about basketball. Because this is what we were there for. I can say for myself that I had a great time watching the game, and the last run by Istanbul was almost perfect. Almost. :D
Labels: , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)