The Efes talisman turned in his finest game of the season against Olympiacos on Friday
Cometh the hour... Cometh Shane Larkin
Article
3 Mins read
Regular Season
Round 4 of 34
Group Regular Season
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Heading into Friday’s home meeting with Olympiacos Piraeus, it’s fair to say that Anadolu Efes Istanbul was facing the heat.
The Turkish team had lost last week’s home derby against Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul and then suffered another defeat at Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv in Belgrade to start the two-round week. A third straight loss would have left Coach Tomislav Mijatovic and his players under real pressure.
So when the game started with Olympiacos racing to an 8-23 lead before the end of the first quarter, it looked very much like Efes’s problems were about to get a whole lot deeper.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
Efes superstar Shane Larkin came into the action with numbers well below his usual standards, averaging just 9.3 points on 23.5% three-point shooting during the first three games as he continued to recover from an ankle injury that forced him to miss the Olympic Games in the summer.
But on Friday night he was well and truly back to his best, inspiring his team to a thrilling victory with an impressive haul of 24 points on 5-of-7 two-point shooting, 4-of-7 from long-range and adding 4 assists for a PIR of 30.
Those heroics started in the second quarter as he netted 14 points – including 12 in just 3 and a half minutes – to all but erase Olympiacos’s double-digit advantage, and continued deep into the game. Indeed, Larkin completed his scoring by hitting the go-ahead basket with a smooth floater inside the final 2 minutes for the last lead change of the night.
After the game, Larkin explained that he was more than ready to take the weight of carrying his team on his shoulders, saying: “I know what this team needs of me.
“I’ve been here for a while now and whenever we start a game slow like that, I try to take a bit more responsibility, and try to force the issue. It just went for me today. It’s been 20 days since I came back from my ankle injury, and my team’s been pouring confidence into me. Today it paid off.”
The star guard also admitted that his teammates were anxious to end their two-game losing streak, and believes those nerves could have contributed to their poor first quarter.
“We started the game a little antsy,” he admitted. “We lost here last week and we lost on the road earlier this week, so we wanted to get a big win at home. We had some jitters early on but we stayed together. Basketball is a game of runs, they made their run and we stayed together, fought hard and got a big win.”
Even with Larkin’s heroics, Efes had to work very hard for the victory and only led for 2 minutes throughout the evening, but the American believes his team got what they deserved for their battling spirit as the game went on.
“We’ve been preaching all off-season that we’ve got to play with aggressiveness, and that’s what we did in the fourth quarter,” he said. “It’s a game for all 40 minutes and we’ve got to continue with the pressure and intensity all four quarters.
“In the fourth quarter, we finally broke them a bit and we were able to get the lead, hold onto it and get a big win.”
A big win… and a big-time performance from Efes’s biggest star.