FIBA Intercontinental Cup 2024: Spain’s Unicaja defeats NBA G League United to claim title

SINGAPORE INDOOR STADIUM,
SINGAPORE – After a dominant showing all tournament long, Spanish
squad Unicaja Malaga got the job done as they beat the NBA G League
United 75-60 in the FIBA Intercontinental Cup 2024 title game
Sunday night here.

Unicaja were phenomenal
throughout the entirety of the FIBA ICC, having an average winning
margin of 21 points per game. They defeated Angola’s Petro de
Luanda and Lebanon’s Al Riyadi Beirut in the group stages before
finishing off the Americans in the championship match.

The Spanish side started out
strong, converting on all of their shot attempts, to jump out on an
early lead in the first quarter. Dylan Osetkowski got going early,
and ended up finishing with 15 points to lead his team in scoring.
Four players scored in double figures for Unicaja as they
distributed the ball well leading to 25 total assists to GLU’s
16.

For his efforts, Osetkowski was
named the MVP of the Tournament.

“As you see in all three games,
I think there’s multiple guys in double figures; there’s multiple
guys shooting threes and driving to the basket. We play a very
team-oriented game of basketball offensively – everybody’s touching
the ball, everyone has an opportunity to score ,” Osetkowski said
to BasketballNews.com in the post-game press conference when asked
about the way Unicaja plays. “Everybody can play a role and have an
opportunity to be the top scorer – for this tournament it was
myself, you replay the tournament maybe it could be somebody else.
So, we have a very deep team that has the ability to play the game
of basketball which is team oriented.”

“The main key of this team is
the team chemistry,” Unicaja coach Ibon Navarro added. “One day
Dylan [Osetkowski] can shine, then the next one it could be anyone,
so it’s not easy to choose one star or MVP from our team because we
got many players that give their best to make their team
win.”

Despite the final score, both
teams went back and forth in the first half, the two teams, trading
make after make. The first quarter ended up 22-17 with Unicaja
leading by 5 and 38-32 at the half, still Unicaja with the
lead.

However, a furious start to the
third quarter by the Spanish had them erecting a lead to as large
as 18, 52-34, halfway through – unleashing a 14-2 run that United
wasn’t able to overcome in the end.

NBA GLU tried to mount one last
comeback attempt with just two minutes to go but it was not enough
as they ran out of time.

Still, it was a great effort for
the United, who were just formed just two weeks before the
tournament. G League United coach Paul Hewitt lauded Unicaja for
outplaying them.

“I thought we had enough talent
to win this whole thing even with our minimal preparations. I think
they [Unicaja] are well-drilled. They just played better than us
tonight. There have been shots we missed in the first half, that
could’ve really tightened the game up and maybe given us the lead
going into the locker room, but like I said our guys played well
but they played better.”

A late Keisei Tominaga moment
was a bright spot in United’s tough loss as he stole the show with
under a minute left – and the crowd roared to the delight of his
first made three-pointer in the game.

Tominaga, a rising Japanese star
who just recently joined Curry Brand, struggled from the field for
NBA GLU with just 1/5 shooting from three.

The Spanish side proved to be
too much to handle as they ran away with the lead in the 4th
quarter, and clinched the title. According to FIBA, it was Europe’s
23rd championship overall in the intercontinental meet between the
champions of each continent, 11 of which were produced by teams
from Spain.

Earlier in the day, Australia’s
Tasmania JackJumpers won the bronze medal match against Al Riyadi
Beirut, 80-75. They made history by becoming Oceania’s first ever
medallists in the history of the tournament.

Petro de Luanda, Africa’s
champion, closed out their campaign strong by winning against South
America’s champion Quimsa from Argentina, 70-64, to clinch 5th
place in the tournament.

The final standings from this
year’s FIBA Intercontinental Cup: