Among the troubles that sometimes surround this Barça, Àlex Abrines sometimes appears.
It can happen suddenly, in unexpected outbursts like the ones tonight at the Palau Blaugrana, the five triples that Abrines (he had enjoyed a tribute in the preliminaries for adding 500 games with Barça) was going to score in a single quarter, the second , one after the other, a punishment for Valencia Basket, which even then insisted on not losing ground (the difference between oscillated between -8 points and -5 against the oranges), but which would end up compromising later, when Barça threw more fuel for the fire, blessed by Mirotic, Satoransky and Vesely, too much for little Harper and the bully Dubljevic, recently recovered from a painful sprained knee.
(Without Van Rossom, Prepelic and López-Arostegui, Valencia lacked a wardrobe).
The final squeeze of the Catalans would end up projecting them to second place in the regular season, a passport to Kaunas, their rival in the quarterfinal playoff, the city of origin of Jasikevicius.
And the chronicler, looking at Jasikevicius, pure nerve on the bench, couldn't help but wonder what was going through the Lithuanian coach's mind then.
Well, that's how curious life goes.
In his twenty years as a professional player, Saras Jasikevicius (47) had barely spent a season at Zalgiris Kaunas.
(The rest of the time he had been a globetrotter, a journey dotted with two stages at Barça, a few months at the Pacers and the Warriors, and other Greek, Turkish or Slovenian destinations).
Another thing is his career as a coach: there, in his native Kaunas, he had started Jasikevicius' career on the bench, a career that would allow him to take over five Lithuanian leagues in one go (from 2016 to 2020), before moving to Barça , where a sixth league was going to be scored, this time an ACB, that of 2021.
Now, as of April 25 (date of the start of the quarterfinal playoffs), Jasikevicius finds himself at a crossroads.
He will have no doubts – whoever pays rules – but some conflicting feeling will surface in his heart in a few weeks, when he finds himself walking the boulevards of his hometown.
