BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

When Real Madrid’s brief affair with Rudy Fernandez ended with the dissolution of the NBA player lockout, Los Blancos looked to up-and-coming Detroit Pistons draft pick Kyle Singler to fill the Denver Nugget’s Nikes. While still adapting to Pablo Laso’s system, Singler has not disappointed thus far and has shown steady improvement through the end of last year into 2012. The Spanish-language blog Sentimiento Amarillo y Naranja today runs a piece detailing the progress of the former Duke Blue Devil in Spain and Euroleague play; an extrapolation follows.

Kyle Singler landed at Real Madrid after the departure of Rudy Fernandez, who had played the first 10 league games with Los Blancos, back to the NBA after the player lockout ended. The Real brain trust then decided to spring for the Real Madrid forward who until then had played the start of the 2011-12 season with Lucentum Alicante, contributing great performances and helping Alicante to stand firm in the top positions in the Liga Endesa.

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After a week two loaded with upsets and shocking blowouts, BallinEurope’s Euroleague Power Rankings go through quite a shuffling going into Top 16 round, week three … except of course at the top, where all indications have the championship matchup between CSKA Moscow and FC Barcelona feeling more inevitable than ever. How is your team faring on the (sorta) big board this week?

Traditional advisory warning: These ratings are pretty much highly subjective, as they are formulated from one source, i.e. BiE, and are based on the way teams are trending at present. While play in other leagues was considered, emphasis was put on Euroleague performance especially, and particularly on the two games each has registered in Top 16 play.

And on to the rankings!

The undefeated
1. (↔) CSKA Moscow (12-0 in Euroleague play overall; 9-1 in VTB United League, 8-1 in PBL)
2. (↔) FC Barcelona (9-1 EL; 13-3 ACB)
3. (↑) Montepaschi Siena (10-2 EL; 13-5 Serie A) – No surprises here, unless you count the emphatic statement wins recorded by each of these elite teams in week two at Maccabi Tel Aviv, vs. Anadolu Efes, and at Real Madrid, respectively. NBA fans are chattering about a shortened season? Ha! With each of these teams at 2-0 and having knocked off the no. 2 contender within their groups, they’ve all made the 2011-12 EL Top 16 round a hell of a lot more urgent for nearly every side in the big league.

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It seems like forever, but Euroleague 2011-12 resurrects itself for Top 16 opening night tonight. What better way to celebrate, reckons BallinEurope, than with some good ol’ power rankings?

Once again, the caveat emptor-ish bit: These ratings are formulated from once source (namely yours truly) and are based on the way teams are trending at present. While play in other leagues was considered, emphasis was put on performance in the latter bits of the EL season.

To the rankings!

Top dogs
1. CSKA Moscow (10-0 in Euroleague regular season; 8-1 in VTB United League, 7-1 in PBL) – Remember the date December 10, 2011: That’s the last time the scary Red Army lost, in falling to BC Khimki in Russia while getting just seven minutes out of Andrei Kirilenko. The Red Army’s only loss before that was exactly one month prior when they fell in a squeaker at Spartak St. Petersburg in their VTB opener. Considering the starting team alone – an all-star squad of Kirilenko, Milos Teodosic, Nenad Krstic, Ramunas Siskauskas, Viktor Khryapa – BiE has to wonder what non-NBA team could beat ‘em. Even after the star power, the CSKA Moscow bench contributed 43.2 points per game in Euroleague play while the team leads in overall performance rating, assists and assist-to-turnover ratio. This has got to be considered the team to beat in 2012.

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Courtesy the awesome Dejan Body (Where does he get those wonderful clips?), below the break runs an incredible blast from the past in a compilation of clips from the 2000 ACB finals featuring a 19-year-old named Pau Gasol, then in his second year with the big club.

Gasol’s FC Barcelona, which also included the just-about 20-year-old Juan Carlos Navarro, ultimately fell to Aleksandar Đorđević and Alberto Angulo’s Real Madrid in five games.

(Has it really been that long…?)

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Most observers are amazed at the early success of Spanish wunderkind Ricky Rubio in the NBA, but at least a couple San Antonio Spurs are claiming to have known this was destined all along.

Tiago Splitter, whose Caja Laboral Baskonia met Rubio’s FC Barcelona many a time since the lad debuted in the ACB at age 14, is quoted over at Spanish-league Tu Basket that he was “amazed at the way [Rubio]’s playing with freedom. In Spain, he was on a team under a lot of pressure to win it all. Here, the coach is giving him the ball in the fourth quarter and he’s playing with confidence. That’s hard to do in the first year.”

Splitter cited Minnesota Timberwolves coach Rick Adelman as a key factor in Rubio’s early NBA success. As TuBasket points out, with Barcelona, Rubio was bound in Xavi Pascual’s more rigid style and ultimately lost playing time to Victor Sada, who was better equipped to handle the offensive game plan – despite Rubio’s well above-average play in pick-and-roll sets.

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Okay, after that Xmas distraction, BallinEurope is ready to write up some more stuff about good tidings and cheer*, namely, the start of the NBA season. With hours to go, BiE’s got just enough time to get in the part two of the Euro-centric big-league preview in this brief look at the teams in the Western Conference – plus Official Fearless Predictions™, guaranteed to be as accurate as they are popular.

*Los Angeles Lakers fans, over whom a huge cloud of doom hangs to start this season, excluded (sigh).

As in the Eastern Conference preview, BiE seeks to keep an eye on those players who contributed a stint in Continental ball this summer during the lockout period and even, to some, extent participants in Eurobasket 2011. BiE believes that the running start from real game-time situations plus the suddenly intensive NBA season will give the Euroballers an advantage in the short-term against more laggardly opponents not in “basketball shape.” And with the shortened regular season, a jump start will provide lasting effects.

To BiE, it looks something like this.

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Hey, look, it’s a Christmas card from Nando de Colo via BallinEurope’s man in Italy, Enrico Cellini! Enjoy and happy holidays!

With few seconds on the clock, French combo guard Nando “Aladdin” de Colo is the man that Valencia fans want to see handling the ball. Check out the acrobatic fashion by which he knocked down a half-court shot against Bilbao Basket just two weeks ago (too bad it didn’t count).

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While basketball lovers are getting something of a Christmas gift this season in the December 25 NBA opening day – BiE says “something of” there because this belated debut is kinda like your parents saying, “Well, we’ll just give you your birthday gift at Christmas.” When your birthday’s in October – BallinEurope would like to add to the virtual bounty under the tree with our annual Eurocentric NBA preview.

Here’s BallinEurope’s predominant working theory for at least the first two months of this season: The teams with more critical players who did a stint in Europe (or South America, for that matter) during the lockout will jump out to the best starts. And with a shortened season increasing the importance of every individual game, imagine what a, say, 17-5 could mean in the long-term – for a European equivalent of this model, how ‘bout that CSKA Moscow turbo boost?

So Kevin Garnett’s complaining that the preseason is too short … guys like Deron Williams have already been in real-game situations. Manu Ginobili is well rested but not “in basketball shape?” The Danilo Gallinaris, Mehmet Okurs and even the Gasol Brothers of the basketball world are set to go. More back-to-back games than ever before in NBA history? Hey, perhaps those two-a-days European coaches are so notorious for assigning will have readied these NBAers well more than the fortnight many of their colleagues are getting.

BiE would even argue that latecomers such as Tiago Splitter and late-peakers like Serge Ibaka are surely few steps ahead of the many American ballers who did not take Continental clubs up on even the most outrageous of offers. It is with this dictum in mind that this preview and Official Fearless Predictions™ were written. Today, the Eastern Conference.

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With one more week of play in 2011, the competition is tighter than ever in Liga Endesa play. With Real Madrid taking care of business at home against Assignia Manresa and Caja Laboral overcoming the visiting FC Barcelona, the Spanish rivals are tied atop the league standings at 10-2. Statistically, Madrid holds the lead with the Liga’s top-scoring offense at 82.67 points per game giving them a 84-point lead on Barça; naturally the Blaugrana are tops in defense, with a stingy 65.33 points allowed per.

In Madrid, Real went on a 13-2 run early to take a 19-8 lead in the first quarter and never looked back on the way to an 83-61 victory over Manresa (now 5-7 and tied for 11th place). Red-hot Nikola Mirotic contributed his Liga Endesa season high with 20 points in just 23 minutes of play.

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One hot-button topic in the European basketball world got a bit more heated yesterday: Word has it that The Azerbaijan Basketball Federation has opened talks that would install American-born players Jaycee Carroll and Nik Caner-Medley on the men’s national team in preparation for Eurobasket qualifiers.

Twitter tremors on the acquisitions – and let’s just call them acquisitions, shall we? It’s just business, after all – are still occurring, but the overriding sentiment only with an interesting bit of information was perhaps best summed up by Sportando’s tweet:

Jaycee Carroll has the same agent as Nik Caner-Medley who got as well passport from Azerbaijan. Europe, where fake passports happen.

As for BallinEurope, yes, we’re addressing the topic. Enrico Cellini weighs in on the subject below.

Suppose you are the head of a basketball federation in a tiny state with little tradition in the sport and must prepare for the Eurobasket 2013 qualification round. You would:

A) Hire a foreign coach with long European Basketball resume;

B) Invest in young players that could turn out to be good in the future; or

C) Just do like everyone else and grant national passports to American players so they can play in your national team.

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