Easy choice for Comeback Player of the Year
With the EL tipoff game tonight, BallinEurope is feeling devotion … not to mention a rush of Fearless Predictions™ coming on. How crazy can BiE get? You be the judge; here are 68 prognostications on all things Euroleague which you may [laugh uproariously about] ponder.
Enjoy the season, everyone! (And sign up for the BallinEurope Invitational League for your fantasy season. The password is “matjazsmodis” and remember: You’ll at least beat out BiE’s pathetic squads…) Fearless Predictions™ follow…
1. Olympiacos defends home court in tonight’s opener in a squeaker over Real Madrid.
2-17. The Euroleague Top 16 will be: Maccabi Tel Aviv, Caja Laboral Baskonia, Partizan Belgrade, Zalgiris Kaunas, Olympiacos, Unicaja Malaga, Real Madrid, Brose Baskets Bamberg, FC Barcelona, Montepaschi Siena, Cibona Zagreb, Fenerbahce Ülker, CSKA Moscow, Panathinaikos, Efes Pilsen and Union Olimpija.
18. The most heavily-contested spot looks to be the no. 4 seed in Group A, thereby meaning that…
19. …week 10’s BC Khimki-Žalgiris game will be one of the key EL games, determining the final Top 16 team.
20. Panathinaikos will not be the first team mathematically eliminated this time…
21. …that’ll be Spirou Basket.
22. My Euroleague fantasy basketball team will suck bricks and will finish in the bottom 25% – hardly a stretch, but hey.
Romanov lurking, ever lurking...
23. Back home, Žalgiris will snap Lietuvos Rytas’ LKL championship run at two, and…
24. …while there’s no way the series will be half an insane as last year’s, you can bet Vladimir Romanov will make his presence felt.
25. The Eurocup championship game will be between Panellinios BC and Unics Kazan.
26. The over/under on games Allen Iverson will play for Beşiktaş Cola Turka (or any European team) is probably 2.5 or so. Take the under.
27. Barça will be just as dominant in Europe this season as in 2009-10, but no way is BiE predicting the ACB finals…
28. Not strictly Euroleague, but BiE wants you-heard-it-first status for this one: No matter where he plays in 2010-11, Enes Kanter will be an NBA Draft lottery pick.
29. And not even by the Minnesota Timberwolves!
Look out for Marty!
30-32. Making a big leap this season: Jan Vesely, Lior Eliyahu, and Martynas “Air” Pocius.
33. Retirement calls for J.R. Holden.
34. No violence or protest will cause forfeiture in any domestic championship – this one’s really fearless, considering the denouement to seasons in Greece and Serbia last year.
35-38. The Euroleague Final Four will be FC Barcelona, CSKA Moscow, Maccabi Tel Aviv and Olympiacos.
39-40. Highest-scoring Euroleague offense: Montepaschi Siena, closely followed by Maccabi Tel Aviv.
41. Stingiest defense: Who else but CSKA?
Portrait of an underdog
42. Surprise of the 2010-11 Euroleague: Brose Baskets Bamberg.
43. Disappointment of the 2010-11 Euroleague: From the outside, it will appear to be Lietuvos Rytas, though many fans are already downplaying the team’s chances. What’s the over/under on number of coaches to be employed there this season…?
44. Speaking of coaches, this will be Ettore Messina’s last season as Real Madrid coach.
45. Ricky Rubio will get no closer to playing in Minneapolis.
46-47. As for the Human YouTube Clip’s season itself, well, the young guy will surely seek to address his long-range shooting and play in the clutch; here’s to thinking the latter doesn’t improve much, but BiE’ll say that Rubio finally redeems himself in a championship situation this year.
48. Rudy Fernandez will be playing Euroball by season’s end.
49-51. Playing on Montepaschi Siena, Bo McCalebb will turn in even better stats than last year (14.3 points, 3.4 assists, 2.1 steals per game) and receive some NBA attention come 2011-12 preseason; unfortunately for him, Milos Teodosic’s all-around game will see the Red nip Bo for first-team All-Euroleague point guard honors.
52-56. The 2010-11 Euroleague first team all-stars: Teodosic, Juan Carlos Navarro, Jan Vesely, Viktor Khryapa, Aleks Maric.
57-61. The 2010-11 Euroleague second team all-stars: McCalebb, Vassilis Spanoulis, Ramunas Siskauskas, Pete Mickael, Erazem Lorbek.
D-M-V-P! D-M-V-P!
62. Euroleague Defensive MVP will be BiE fave Pete Mickael.
63. As for EL MVP, geeked by the play of Jan Vesely as Euroleague progressed last season, BiE was captured on a Euroleague Adventures podcast as declaring Vesely my guess for this season’s trophy. That wasn’t an official Fearless Prediction™, so BiE’ll retreat from that stance and go with Juan Carlos Navarro instead.
64. Surprise player of the year (at least through the first 10 games): Bobby Brown of Asseco Prokom. He’ll make the Los Angeles Clippers regret dropping him. Yeah, surrrrrrrrrrrrre – like anyone in that front office gives a damn about anything.
65. Comeback player of the year: Matjaz Smodis, of course.
66. The BiE upset special of week one? Bamberg surprises Virtus Roma in Italy on Wednesday night.
67-68. The 2011 Euroleague Championship game comes down to FC Barcelona and CSKA Moscow, with Barça making it back-to-back titles.
Tags: 2011 NBA Draft, ACB, Aleks Maric, Allen Iverson, Asseco Prokom Gdynia, BallinEurope fantasy league, Beşiktaş Cola Turka, Bo McCalebb, Bobby Brown, Brose Baskets Bamberg, Caja Laboral Baskonia, Cibona Zagreb, CSKA Moscow, Efes Pilsen, Enes Kanter, Erazem Lorbek, Ettore Messina, Eurocup 2010-11, Euroleague, Euroleague 2010-11, Euroleague Final Four 2011, Euroleague Top16, FC Barcelona, Fenerbahce Ülker, Greece, J.R. Holden, Jan Vesely, Juan Carlos Navarro, Lietuvos Rytas, Lior Eliyahu, LKL, Los Angeles Clippers, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Martynas Pocius, Matjaz Smodis, Milos Teodosic, Minnesota Timberwolves, Montepaschi Siena, Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, Panellinios, Partizan Belgrade, Pete Mickeal, Ramunas Siskauskas, Real Madrid, Ricky Rubio, Rudy Fernandez, Serbia, Slam and Freaknick's Euroleague Adventures, Spirou Basket, Unicaja Malaga, UNICS Kazan, Union Olimpija, Vassilis Spanoulis, Viktor Khryapa, Virtus Roma, Vladimir Romanov, Zalgiris Kaunas
Concerning 2-19, you SURE are a big Partizan fan
Let’s see, but I think (or hope) that the last Zalgiris-Khimki game won’t be a decider for either of these teams concerning qualification, rather for the 3rd place…
1. Messina’s guys will shock the opener!
2-17 groupA caja-mta-bc kimki-zalgiris; groupB Olympiacos-Real-Roma-Unicaja; groupC FCB-MPS-Fenerbache-Lietuvos; groupD CSKA-PAO-Valencia-AJ
20 ..Pana was the first eliminated from last yeas top16.. Spirou won’t arrive at that stage..
33. very sorry about that if this is due to health problem
35-38 FCB-CSKA-Real-Olympiacos
41 FCB
42 BC Kimki
44 no way:he’ll reach the f4 ..so he’ll stay in Madrid
66 c’mon…..
67-68 FCB-Real
Olympiacos was impressive last night. With clearly the best periphery (Teodosic, Spanoulis, Papaloukas, I think there’s no disagreement) in Europe and arguably the best offensive center (Bouroussis, simply unstoppable last night), I say that things are looking good. Sure there are clear soft spots in the roster, but I trust Duda to fill them.
I think the “play of the night” and the first 2′ in the 4th are the story of the match.
http://euroleague.infrontams.tv/index.php?id=3249
(By the way.. it’s not Keseli’s shot but Mavrokefalidis…)
I’ve noticed BiE’s done a pioneering job of vriting ELs’ players’ names the way they’re written originally – Šarunas Jasikevičius, for example. Not surprisingly, EL’s official site deserves to be scorched a bit over this lapsus – not that they care any.
As a Slovenian basketball fan, I’m also flattered by the amount of attention Matjaž Smodiš is getting here – and of course, I feel it is every bit deserved!
Here’s the stint – mr. Comeback-player-of-2010/11 is spelled with a Ž and a Š – same two letters used consistantly when reffering to Žalgiriš or Šarunas.
Otherwise, all the respect to Ball in Europe for the work they’re doing, you got at least one fan on the sunny side of the Alpes!
The problem with the diacritical marks is twofold: One, they screw up in a lot of browsers to make the names unreadable (which is why BiE typically drops the accent marks in the headlines) and some search engines don’t support the marks as identical characters; in other words, “Šarunas” is not the same as “Sarunas,” as far as the engine is concerned.
Also, a lot of the time, i just use the spellings as employed by the source, so basically if a foreign player is in the NBA, well, he pays for the $1 million contract with misrepresentation of his name … it’s probably worth it.
“The Eurocup championship game will be between Panellinios BC and Unics Kazan”
Don’t know about Kazan, but Panellinios barely formed a squad in time for the greek championship. He’s nowhere near Eurocup level, let alone participating in any championship game.
Panellinios has one of the best rosters in Eurociup along with UNICS and ALBA. I have no idea why you would question that prediction. They are certainly one of the favorites to win Eurocup.
However, Vesely making all Euroleague first team is a ridiculous prediction.
Panellinios should do much better playing in their new arena also. As you can see, it is a lot bigger and a lot fuller of fans than there old arena was.
http://www.esake.gr/img/uploads/big/1287149421.jpg
Do any of your guesses concerning Rytas change with the possible addition of Khalid El-Amin or Scoonie Penn? A contract worth $ 260,000 with El-Amin is on the player’s table. That’s what’s been coming out.
That’s a very good question. I don’t know much about El-Amin, but i would be very curious to see what Scoonie Penn would do for this club … i may yet change some of those Fearless Predictions…
MACCABI BETTER FROM PANATHINAIKOS????
HELLOOOOO…,,,,,
IS ANYBODY THERE..????
[...] goes another Fearless Prediction™ (probably), though in this case BallinEurope couldn’t be happier about being [...]
[...] agree, Antonio. Hell, the official BallinEurope Fearless Predictions™ going into the 2010-11 season had Panellinios in the Eurocup finals against Unics Kazan. I’m still feeling pretty good about [...]