Two unbeaten teams met in Athens on Thursday and only one of them turned up for the second half. Panathinaikos beat Fenerbahce 92-74, and the quarters tell it plainly: 27-24, 19-17, 21-14, 25-19. Four quarters, four wins.

Fenerbahce gave the ball away sixteen times against seven. Panathinaikos shot twenty-one free throws to nine and made 62% of their twos. That is not a night that turned on one shot.

So: the best team in the league, 4-0, plus 83 points on the season, and nobody within two games of them in the table.

Now the strange part.

The best team in the league loses fourth quarters

We went through the play-by-play of all forty games this season and split every one into quarters. Here is Panathinaikos across four rounds:

  • First quarter: plus 44
  • Second quarter: plus 13
  • Third quarter: plus 29
  • Fourth quarter: minus 3

They are the only unbeaten team in Europe with a losing fourth quarter.

It is not a flaw, it is arithmetic. When you lead by twenty-three after thirty minutes, the last ten are played by the end of your bench against people who still need the stats. The fourth quarter is where the game gets handed back. But it does mean something for later: nobody in this league has yet made Panathinaikos play a close finish, so nobody knows what they look like in one.

Fenerbahce had the same problem from the other side. Plus 31 in first quarters this season, best in the league, and then they spend the rest of the night defending it.

Valencia have a third quarter and not much else

Valencia are also 4-0, which almost nobody predicted, and the reason is hiding in plain sight.

Their third quarters, game by game: plus 7, plus 4, plus 10, plus 10. They have won the third in every game they have played. Across the season it is plus 31, the biggest third quarter in the competition.

The other three quarters add up to plus 18 between them.

Whatever is said in that locker room at half time is working. Beat Valencia and you will almost certainly have to do it by surviving ten minutes after the break, which is exactly what Hapoel could not do on Thursday: level at the half, then outscored 27-17 in the third, and beaten 93-82.

That was not bad luck either. Hapoel's third quarters this season: minus 6, minus 2, minus 20, minus 10. Minus 38 in total, the worst in the league by some distance. A team with the player of the opening fortnight sits at 2-2, and the reason is a ten-minute window they keep losing.

Who you want with four minutes left

Flip the table over and the fourth quarter tells a different story about who is actually dangerous.

Partizan are plus 34 in fourth quarters, the best in the league, and it is not close. They are 3-1. Their one bad night came on Thursday in Madrid, where Real finally won a game, 86-76, on nine made threes to three.

Real Madrid are worth a second look, because 1-3 undersells them badly. Their points difference is minus 5. Everyone else near the bottom of the table is minus 25 or worse. They have been a good team losing close games, and the clock says where: plus 16 in third quarters this season, minus 11 in fourth quarters. They were not being beaten. They were running out of game.

At the other end, Dubai are minus 22 in fourth quarters and on Thursday they did not need one. They scored 58 points at home against Crvena Zvezda, the lowest total any team has managed this season, shooting 38% on twos. Xavi Pascual has been in the job a month and has now seen both versions of it.

The rest of it

Olympiacos took nineteen offensive rebounds to six against Anadolu Efes and won 89-66. Maccabi won their first, 97-79 over Milan, shooting 69% on twos. Zalgiris won in Barcelona on free throws, seventeen to seven. Besiktas made eleven threes at Baskonia and won again. ASVEL and Paris played the only close game of the round, 98-96, settled by ASVEL making fourteen of twenty-seven from three.

Four rounds in, two teams are unbeaten, and five clubs sit at 2-2 separated by a dozen points of difference. Everything is in the table, and the full round has every result.

Round 5 is on Tuesday and Wednesday, and it starts with the fixture this whole piece has been pointing at. Panathinaikos go to Belgrade to play Partizan: the team that wins first quarters by the most, away at the team that wins fourth quarters by the most. One of those habits gets tested on Tuesday night.

Valencia host Olympiacos the same evening. If the pattern holds, we will know how that one is going about four minutes into the third.