With the FirstTeamLeague kicking off last night with great excitement, all eight teams were in action. The inaugural game featured Bayern Ballers Gaming (BBG) and Team DUX Gaming, two very entertaining teams who played a very competitive game. While Bayern took the win 56-48, there were a number of gameplay aspects to break down, and so below you can find clips and commentary analysing both team’s offenses.
LIZVNITY finished this game as MVP, and this clip should give you an insight why. With IIDOGAN and SlinexX working out of the Pick-and-Roll, AitorBigBoy of Team Dux Gaming overhelps, anticipating a drive or roll to the basket. This leaves LIZVNITY wide open in the corner, who makes the shot with a perfect release to extend his team’s lead.
This is a very similar play, emphasizing the impact LIZVNITY had on the offensive end. While LIZVNITY was able to score out of the corner and help his team gain momentum, the same can’t be said for AitorBigBoy, who struggled with his outside shooting for Team DUX Gaming, and the discrepancy was a difference-maker in the outcome of game.
While LIZVNITY deserves a lot of credit for his offensive performance, his impact would not have been as great if his point guard wasn’t able to get him the ball in the right spots. IIIDOGAN is an excellent playmaker, and used his vision well to find open teammates throughout this game. In this particular play, his ability to create space off the dribble drew in the opposing defenders, allowing him to hit Erenksk9 for the open shot from 3.
There are a lot of different things I like about this play from Bayern Ballers Gaming. Firstly, they are very quick to get the ball upcourt here, and they did not allow the defense to get set up in the halfcourt as a result. There is also good ball movement, as they pass the ball from the corner to the wing and back to the top with relative ease. AveMario32 is too eager to jump in the passing lanes, and gets caught out of position when the ball reaches SlinexX at the top. Finally, I love to see bigs that are comfortable dribbling, and SlinexX does that very well here, taking advantage of his open lane to the rim and throwing down a ferocious windmill dunk.
While this is the last play from BBG included in this breakdown, I think it perfectly sums up their performance and playing style in this game. Firstly, we see LIZVNITY getting a steal from the corner, which we saw him do many times throughout this contest. They also ran out in transition here, as fastbreak offense is something Bayern is well-known for, dating back to their foundation in April 2018. They also showed excellent spacing and ball movement in this play, which ended with an alley-oop dunk for imFeno_.
While Team DUX Gaming didn’t come out on top, there were definitely some positive aspects of their performance as well as some areas to improve. One such positive was the play of PG eduardopv, who got to the basket with ease many times in this game. Using his dribbling ability, he was able to beat the one-man-press and take the ball coast-to-coast multiple times, ending with a strong finish at the rim on the other end.
However, one thing that I’d like to see more of is the playmaking ability of AveMario32. Without doubt, Mario is one of the top bigs in all of Europe, and you can see here that he is very capable of getting his teammates involved. While most of his offensive contributions in this game came through scoring from second-chance points and alley-oops, I’d like to see him dribbling and passing more, and be more involved in the offense, Similar to Sick One of Raptors Uprising GC and other bigs in the NBA 2K League, I think Mario could easily become a central playmaker in the offense if given the opportunity. Perhaps that is something Team DUX Gaming could integrate in the future, although they definitely have the potential to do very league in this league given the strength and chemistry of their roster.
