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With most leagues drawing to a close and playoffs beginning – not to mention champions already crowned in Albania, Cyprus, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Norway and a few regional leagues – BallinEurope returns its “List of European Basketball Champions.”
At present, only the above-listed domestic leagues have shut down for the summer; BiE supplies information on the current situation in the others’ regular seasons and/or playoffs. This list will be updated whenever possible.
The dust – and in Germany, the glass – has settled on a week of Cup tournament action throughout The Continent, so it’s time for BallinEurope to crunch the numbers in compiling the weekly Top 100 Teams in Europe list.
But, ran the first question, what relative weight should be prescribed for these games for national bragging rights? Should there just be a bonus for winning the big enchilada and perhaps ending up Cup runner-up? How much of national tournaments are mostly about pride and how much should a winning team be credited for beating an all-too-familiar-opponent? And how to keep the Copa del Rey winner from clinching the number one spot for the rest of the season?
Can it all be over so quickly? February Madness peaked this weekend in Europe, with several domestic cup tournaments being played out and celebrations aplenty. BallinEurope this morning provides a rundown of the action – and, naturally, video clips. Without further ado, then, let’s look in on the insanity.
• To no one’s surprise, Spanish superpowers FC Barcelona and Real Madrid indeed met in the Copa del Rey final with La Blaugrana overcoming their rivals playing on their home court, 68-60. Check out, as the league’s official website, says a collection of clips including “Alley oops terribles de [Boniface] N’Dong y [Fran] Vázquez, mate furioso de Clay Tucker, D’Or Fischer que pone el candado a su aro … ¡Mucha diversión en la Final!”
Europe’s dunk of the week may well be the posterization that went down in perhaps Europe’s upset of the week, namely BC Kalev/Cramo’s 77-70 VTB United League win over Euroleague side Asseco Prokom on Wednesday night.
To make matters worse for the Polish side, Ratko Varda (and Prokom’s entire half-court D, essentially) was caught completely flatfooted by speedy Gert Dorbek. Check out the video below: You can’t really blame the defense too much for not seeing this one coming…
Eliyahu's ready to go
With another week to kill before the Euroleague Top 16 round begins, BallinEurope is marking up the calendar to note must-see teevee for January to March, getting out the red pens and awaiting the following matchups.
January 19: Real Madrid vs. Partizan Belgrade
January 19: Efes Pilsen Istanbul vs. Montepaschi Siena. Wow, Group G is awesome. Seeded with perhaps the best from each position – no. 1 seed MPS, currently BiE’s top team in Europe; no. 2 Read Madrid, from whom we still haven’t seen the best work in 2010-11; no. 3 Efes Pilsen, inconsistent but talented enough to have taken out Union Olimpija plus Panathinaikos in Greece; and fourth-seed Partizan Belgrade (!), always a tough play in half the games. These opening-day games will already put pressure for the losers, and just imagine how tight this group instantly gets if both away teams win…
January 20: FC Barcelona vs. Maccabi Tel Aviv. Of all the sweet matchups in Top 16 week one, the league has chosen this as “Game of the Week” – and why not? Playing shorthanded for most of the 2010-11 season (they’ll still be without BiE fave Pete Mickael in this game, too, dammit), Barça is nevertheless 19-6 in ACB and Euroleague play after the Saturday win over fellow Euroleaguers Unicaja Malaga. (Video below.)
Yeah, we’re gonna do the “Top 10” retrospective thing, but trust BiE: It’ll be mostly painless. (After all, a little reviewing of crazy highlights never hurt anyone – even with a hangover.) These are the stories running on BallinEurope in calendar year 2010 that got the most “reads,” but how many do you remember?
Relive 2010 with BiE through championships Euroleague and FIBA, the NBA offseason, the greatest basketball documentary in years, Allen Iverson abroad and dunks. Oh yes, there will be dunks. Click on any the titles in bold to read the original post. Enjoy and as always thanks for reading BallinEurope.com!
So Žalgiris gets its coach fired after playing .800 ball through 20 games, Spanish powerhouses lose in Lithuania and Germany, Valencia kills Milano, Efes Pilsen stuns PAO … just another week in Euroleague 2010-11, eh? And after happenings aplenty, it sounds like time for another edition of BallinEurope’s Official Euroleague Power Rankings! Let’s go!
Tops of the table
1. (↔) Maccabi Tel Aviv (8-1 in Euroleague; 8-1 in Ligat HaAl) – Here comes that blurb again: Forget the Miami Heat, the Boston Celtics, the Los Angeles Lakers even (heresy); the best offseason was had by Maccabi Tel Aviv, which once again underwent a complete reboot, as the kids these days might say. Addendum: And now they’re adding Milan Macvan? Sheesh.
“Do[es] all the little things with surprising grace and feeling – and an iron will to win.” – characterization of prototypical Lithuanian player in FreeDarko’s The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac
BallinEurope’s latest obsession started with a tweet. Specifically, a message from BiE’s main Lithuanian, Martynas “Air” Pocius. Pocius retweeted a fascinating stat about his Žalgiris Kaunas dug up by In The Game Basket, namely:
Now we can make that 5-3 and still one win or one Baskonia loss away from the Top 16 after another typical 2010 Žalgiris outing against Asseco Prokom last week. In that match, the Lithuanian side eked out a 72-69 away win in Poland, though the home side had slight advantages in shooting (admittedly poor on both ends, as Prokom edged with 32% overall against Kaunas’ 30.5%) and rebounding.
And, of course, there were these statistics for Žalgiris: 59 possessions, 15 turnovers. Or 25.4%.
What gives? Join BiE on a romp through the numbers … and a lesson in that “will to win” principle expressed in real on-court terms.
Over at Real GM, they’re taking a bit of a detour from their NBA focus to present an interview with J.R. Giddens, guard with Asseco Prokom Gdynia and formerly of BiE alma mater University of New Mexico.
After an infamous bar fight in which he was stabbed, Giddens transferred from the University of Kansas to New Mexico, where he was the undisputed team stud in 2006-07 and 2007-08, playing over 30 and 32 minutes per game in the two seasons. Giddens was taken as the last pick of the first round in the 2008 NBA Draft, but couldn’t stick with the Boston Celtics. After spending time with the D-League Utah Flash, a cup of coffee with the New York Knicks in 2010 and finally with the Sacramento Kings’ summer league squad, Giddens’ (and Bobby Brown’s) agent had his client take a deal to play with Poland’s Euroleague club.
Apologies for the tardiness of this column, dear readers, but the Official BallinEurope Euroleague Power Rankings are just as fun and informative on Sundays as they are on Saturdays! With four teams through into the Top 16 round and several more on the bubble, who’s cruising and who’s losing? BiE says the two dozen squads stack up this way…
Top of the Table
1. (↑) Maccabi Tel Aviv (6-1 in Euroleague; 6-1 in Ligat HaAl) – We’ll just keep running this blurb until the star-studded Yellow-and-Blue shows any signs of serious vincibility: Forget the Miami Heat, the Boston Celtics, the Los Angeles Lakers even (heresy); the best offseason was had by Maccabi Tel Aviv, which once again underwent a complete reboot, as the kids these days might say.
2. (↑) Fenerbahçe Ülker (6-1; 8-0 in TBL) – No. 1 in scoring, no. 2 in defensive rebounds, no. 3 in rebounding, no. 3 in fewest turnovers allowed … it’s tough to deny these guys the top spot, particularly in a season of oddities; wouldn’t a surprise team in the Euroleague finals like Fenerbahçe be fitting?
