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This content was machine-translated from the French version.
Dubai Basketball did more than just win in Milan: the Emirati club showed that it could absorb a poor start, impose its rhythm, then withstand a fierce comeback. Winners 101-97 against Olimpia on the sixth matchday of the EuroLeague, Xavi Pascual’s team ends its European week with two road victories. Dwayne Bacon, who scored 29 points, set the tone for an evening in which Dubai displayed as much talent as composure.
Eleven points down, then the game turns
Aggressive on the boards and accurate from beyond the arc, the Italians quickly built an eleven-point lead.
Milan had nevertheless prepared a distinctly un-touristy welcome. Aggressive on the boards and accurate from beyond the arc, the Italians quickly built an eleven-point lead. The opening of the game seemed to extend Olimpia’s European struggles, but from the wrong side of the script: a promising start, with no guarantee of continuity.
After a timeout by Xavi Pascual, Dubai completely changed the pace. Bacon scored 14 points in the first quarter without missing a shot. His accuracy turned the initial deficit into a six-point lead after ten minutes, 29-23. With Elie Okobo maintaining the production whenever Bacon rested and Mfioundu Kabengele effective near the rim, the visitors went into halftime with a seven-point lead, 56-49.
This response says something about the team: it has enough solutions not to depend on a single favorable sequence. Bacon’s outside threat stretched the Milan defense, while Kabengele occupied the paint and Jaron Blossomgame brought his energy. Dubai did not have to choose between power and speed; for a large part of the game, it used both.
Bacon catches fire, Dubai takes a twenty-point lead
The third quarter confirmed the gap between the two dynamics. Dubai continued to find clean looks and extended its lead to twenty points. Bacon finished with 29 points on an impeccable 6-for-6 from three-point range. Kabengele added 18 and Blossomgame 14, while Okobo handed out five assists.
Milan, already beaten at home by Real Madrid a few days earlier, appeared without an answer for a long time. Five Italian players nevertheless reached at least ten points. Garrison Mathews led the team with 21, Moses Wright scored 16 and Lorenzo Brown — absent from the statistical sheet published under that name, with Cole credited with 14 points — did not provide a verifiable solution; the useful conclusion therefore remains collective: Olimpia produced on offense, but too late to control the game.
At 83-68 after three periods, the matter seemed settled. It was not. Milan took advantage of its opponents’ lapses in concentration and several trips to the line to move within two points in the final minute. The Forum came alive, Dubai began playing with the clock, and a controlled victory suddenly looked like a suitcase whose closure refused to hold.
A solid victory, with a warning included
Bacon ultimately secured the result at the free-throw line. Milan got neither a shot to tie nor a possession to take the lead, and Dubai retained a four-point advantage at the buzzer. The final quarter, which it lost 29-18, will nevertheless prevent Pascual from filing the evening among the flawless performances.
The coach himself highlighted the loss of concentration and the mistakes in the final five minutes. This frankness matters: against a more stable opponent, almost entirely giving up a twenty-point lead can cost the game. Dubai therefore took two things home from Italy, a victory and enough video footage to occupy the next practice.
The immediate outlook remains very positive. Three days after winning 93-79 on Baskonia’s court, the club dominated another EuroLeague regular away from home. For a team still relatively new at this level, two consecutive road victories weigh more than a simple run on the standings: they show that the roster knows how to adapt its game to different contexts.
Milan, for its part, absorbs a fifth defeat in six European matchdays and remains at the bottom of the standings. Dubai now returns home to open its Adriatic League campaign against SC Derby. The next step will be less spectacular but just as revealing: turning a brilliant week into a habit, without needing to come close to disaster in the final minutes.
