Barcelona faces the start of the final 'playoff' of the ACB with the burden of the option of closing a year in white. Precisely, against a Real Madrid team that once again cut him off in the Euroleague Final Four and who, in the end, lifted the title. Added to this anxiety is the apparent certainty of a bitter farewell. According to TV3, the club has already informed Nikola Mirotic that it does not have him for next season.. The Spanish-Montenegrin came to the Barcelona entity as the great argument to achieve the highest European scepter, but in that competition he has ended up chaining three notorious consecutive failures, no matter how much he managed to stand in final paths to four. The first one that could have been played, meanwhile, was suspended due to the outbreak of the latest pandemic.

The year has not been exactly kind for the team led by Sarunas Jasikevicius, no matter how much they strengthened last summer with players like Vesely or Satoransky. The coach's name, in fact, has also been put on the wing in the face of the new cuts that hang over Barca basketball. The Lithuanian, however, does seem more willing to accept a reduction in his income. Something in which Mirotic, the highest paid player in Europe, with some five million euros net per season, was not willing to give up.

The four seasons that the Spanish-Montenegrin has spent in the Barcelona ranks are adorned for now with a League title, to which could be added the one that is now played with Real Madrid, and two Copas del Rey. A trophy that, in the present course, embodied the first great disappointment for the Barcelona fans. Unicaja, who would become champion after eliminating the madridistas in the semifinals and beating Tenerife in the final, removed them from the fight for the title in the quarterfinal duel.

POSSIBLE DESTINATIONS

The Andalusian team, precisely, has been the last major obstacle that the Catalans have had to overcome to get into the final playoff of the ACB. And they did it by winning the two duels that were played at the Martín Carpena, after being beaten at the Palau by a more than combative Unicaja in the second match of the series. Last Tuesday, in fact, the sensations that Mirotic transmitted from the park were somewhat strange. Although he put a lot of effort into defensive tasks and ended up signing a notable performance, his offensive statistics were very far from those devastating numbers that he usually adds as the one who does not want the thing. The possibility of leaving Barça this summer was already very seriously on the table and, now, it has become an absolutely palpable reality. For now, although there is still nothing official, Ettore Messina's Olimpia in Milan is emerging as the most plausible option to become his new destination, despite the fact that Monaco has also made a name for itself.

The Spanish-Montenegrin player now has before him the possibility of closing his stage as a Barça player with one last dance against a Real Madrid whose fans do not forgive him at all for the betrayal of signing for his eternal rival on his return to Europe. A bet that will have a much more abrupt end than Mirotic would have expected, who confessed to having experienced the hardest day of his career the night that the white team deprived him of getting into the Euroleague final for the second consecutive year.

The team coached by Chus Mateo, to whom the Euroleague title gave a new role, after getting rid of Joventut and with the obligation to start at least one victory at the Palau, will try, from now on, to add a double that would be Without a doubt, a whole finishing touch for this wounded Barcelona and that needs to reinvent itself again, lightening its pockets.