Rytas complete the impossible to win Basketball Champions League

This was over. It was done. Until it wasn’t. Rytas came into Badalona with house money and they bet big on themselves to pull off the greatest comeback in Basketball Champions League history. Emmet Ryan on a stunning night that left AEK in tatters.

Basketball is a 40 minute game. The game isn’t over until the final horn sounds. Never has that truism been more worth stating than tonight in Badalona. Rytas had brought the bodies with them from Vilnius but looked certain to be leaving disappointed.

They were simply awful for more than half the final of the Basketball Champions Leage. Then Simonas Lukosius decided that he wasn’t going down without a fight. That rallied the red and black army around him as Rytas recorded one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the sport to stun AEK.

Terms of engagement

This one started with both sides happy to go deep in the shot clock. Both AEK and Rytas were more than willing to bide their time to create the best scoring opportunity. The key difference came on how each addressed the defensive side of the game.

For Rytas, it was a case of trying to contain space and reduce the quality of opportunities for the Athens club. AEK meanwhile started the Basketball Champions League final looking to take out some bodies. The sheer physicality on D was obvious from the off and the shutdown of Arturas Gudaitis at the basket emphasised the point.

As with their semi-final win over Unicaja Malaga, AEK were happy to spread the ball when it came to scoring opportunities. So long as it made life painful for Rytas, they were happy. With Rytas unquestionably in need of second-chance opportunities more in this game, AEK made sure the Vilnius club paid a heavy price for each of them.

Frank Bartley starts cooking

There has been a simple rule for AEK in the Basketball Champions League this season. If Frank Bartley has a good scoring night, they win. Bartley wasted little time getting to work, with a three to open AEK’s account in the game.

After a bit of a lull for the Athens club following a first quarter timeout by Rytas, the season MVP stepped things up a notch. He had 8 points on the board inside of 8 minutes and he was finding multiple ways to hurt Rytas.

Whatever hope Rytas had going into this one heavily depended on containing Bartley. While AEK were unselfish bullies in their win on Thursday, they were getting the best of both worlds in this. Bartley was a great first option and he drew enough attention to ensure there was always someone else open if he didn’t like the look.

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Devastating depth

Lukas Lekavicius and James Nunnally both decided they wanted this to be an easy night. The duo came off the bench and went to work with authority. Lekavicius opened the second quarter scoring right in the faces of the core support of Rytas.

Then Nunnally decided he wanted a lot of the same. Within 6 minutes of his introduction, the well-travelled American had 11 points including making a trio of shots from deep. The result was the lead ballooning to 15 points early in the second quarter and AEK could taste a second Basketball Champions League crown already.

That’s what this side has been able to show all season. Dragan Sakota has built an unselfish but aggressive monster. The combination of size and shooting depth is unmatched in this competition. Sakota can keep rolling in serious threats to ramp up the tempo at will.

Winning time?

The last 4:58 of the first half felt crucial to deciding the outcome of this game. AEK led by 12, a margin that no team had come back from in a Basketball Champions League final. To buck history, Rytas needed something really special before they went to the locker rooms.

While the AEK offensive game got a little bit sidetracked, they locked down defensively, reducing Rytas to some poor looks. The 2018 champions felt like they were one bucket away from truly blowing this game open.

Nobody scored more than Rytas in the first half of games in the BCL this season, averaging 46.1 entering the final. AEK stuffed them and kept them to just 25, including going scoreless for the final 5.57 of the half. The bucket AEK needed came on a RaiQuan Gray put back with 24 seconds left in the half. Nunnally added another pair from the free throw line to put this one beyond doubt at the half.

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Yet they couldn’t make it easy on themselves

Well, that fourth quarter was really something. Rytas finally found something offensively as both Speedy Smith and Jerrick Harding hit form at the same time. That created more room on the outside and the ultimate comeback was on.

Having led by as much as 20 in the third quarter, AEK’s lead was down to 5 points with 3:50 left on the clock. The game nature of Rytas had got them back in the fight and there were shades of Istanbul 2012, when Olympiaco overcame CSKA Moscow.

Rytas tied it up late and had a Speedy Smith prayer shot to potentially win it in regulation. Yet they couldn’t quite close out the comeback there. Still, Rytas had already done the unthinkable by coming back into it. Overtime was there for the taking.

Even when their team was in a big hole, the Rytas fans who made the trip from Vilnius kept believing until the end.
Photo: Basketball Champions League.

Five minutes of fury

No team in Basketball Champions League history had ever come back from the types of deficits Rytas faced in this final. Rytas had never played so poorly in the first half of any BCL game they’d every played. They looked done and dusted before the final quarter started.

Yet here they were, rocking out to an 8 point lead without reply to start the first ever overtime in a BCL title game. The red and black horde that had made the trip from Vilnius was in full song with AEK feeling the pressure.

Simonas Lukosius was writing himself into Rytas lore with every play. this was there for Rytas. The Vilnius club was rising to the occasion in unreal style.

Think of the context

This is a Rytas team that has been the peak team for drama in the Basketball Champions League ever since it joined the competition. They were going up against a team that had been able to take control and maintain it against so many top sides all season.

Yet Rytas simply never stopped believing. They embraced the underdog spirit like few could and claim a first ever Basketball Champions League title, in a final that will not so much live long in the memory as it will be etched there permanently.

Sport is made better by miracles and that’s what we saw in Badalona on Saturday night. In an arena where Lithuania won Olympic bronze in 1992, Rytas wrote another extraordinary chapter in the history of basketball on Saturday night.

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