Attention: The Fantasy deadline is tonight

I was quite a bit shocked when I saw Monday morning that the first game of the Euroleague week was already today. While ALBA fans in various forums were still discussing whether their game against Fenerbahce in the O2 World will be a home game or not (bear in mind that Berlin is sometimes called the third-largest Turkish city in the World, which is not true by the way), I was wondering how to manage my time and team in order to write a quality article about the changes. I did change my plans a bit and the Euroleague Power Rankings will only be published later.

So what is the situation right now? My team performed surprisingly well last week with my best-ever ranking in the general standings: 928th. So now is the time to really stabilize and earn constant ranking points. The time for experimentation is over. Now I need the big guys, the money players. I do this the same way as my weekend predecessor Javi and always go for my trades while writing the article. But I do write what comes through my head and don’t erase the changes I did not make, as you may have seen the weeks before. So enough blah-blah, let’s move on to this week’s tips.

A quick look at the Injury List, though as incomplete as always, at least helped me to avoid having an injured player on my team. What I see is that Olympiacos has three injured forwards that probably won’t play so this might be a good possibility for an interesting gamble. Giorgios Printezis looks pretty interesting in that area, as he costs only 28 credits and should be able to better than my “steal” for last week, Rodrigo de la Fuente. Mirza Begic has reached the maximum of his potential in my opinion so he’ll be out, as I want to sign somebody who will be present in the Top 16. I’m going for similar thinking on Ioannis Bouroussis, who should be at the top of his potential at 80 credits. So he is out, too.

With the Greek center out, I have enough money in the bank to go for money in the bank in terms of centers, too: Tiago Splitter is in the house and should easily score 20+ ranking points against Union Olimpija. By gambling on Printezis, I still have the opportunity to go for Mirsad Türkcan, who I expect to go strong against ALBA Berlin, as Patrick Femerling is still limited in his minutes and the rest of the inside players are not known for the defensive excellency. So the self-declared best friend of Pat Ewing should excel in the offensive rebound action as the Turks may come up with a lot of (missed) long-distance shots.

OUT: Rodrigo de la Fuente (Roma), Mirza Begic (Olimpija) and Ioannis Bouroussis (Olympiacos).

IN: Giorgios Printezis (Olympiacos), Mirsad Türkcan (Fenerbahce) and Tiago Splitter (TAU).

After having made my trades, I took a quick look through the different rankings within our the BallinEurope Private League. Even if only the overall ranking counts to win the great Euroleague and K1X prizes, it’s always nice to see the name of some different teams at the top. And here’s the surprise of the day: David Hein and his “Garth Monsters” team is 5th in overall three-point ranking. Congratulations, Dave! Felicidades to our Spanish guys Javi and Pablo, who are topping the rebound rankings, while Penny Hardaway fan cappe is leading the assists table.

Good luck for everyone and don’t miss the deadline!

Tips from the Euroleague boss: Week 6

Hi everyone, this is once again Javier Gancedo, as always from the Euroleague Basketball headquarters at Palau Sant Jordi. Well, not always, since it is my day off today, and I’m at home chilling out in Barcelona.

First of all, the fact that I know nothing about basketball kills me. I come up with The Golden Rule about CSKA and you know what happened: Armani Jeans Milano downed the reigning Euroleague champions and David Hawkins had a fantastic game. I was shocked to see Real Madrid rally from a 28-point deficit only to lose on a running layup by Aaron Miles. Hopefully, Miles will no longer be missed in my hometown Sevilla since DeJuan Collins is in town. I’m already going to the game against DKV Joventut next week with stuff from KFC and some private DVDs to make sure he plays well.

Like I said, I am still fortunate to keep my spot here at BallinEurope. OK, I choked with the CSKA Golden Rule thing, but I think that my team is doing a pretty good job this season. It’s not easy to anticipate what you do and still be one of the top teams in the private league. Making it to the Top 3 will be difficult: There are very good teams out there. First of all and above all, keep in mind that THE DEADLINE IS ON TUESDAY AT 19:00, because Alba Berlin has an early game this week. You have been warned…

As for my team, let’s see what we have - I always do the trades live as I write this article, I think it makes it fresher. You don’t know how many times I erase parts of the text and come back. Anyway, Mirza Begic has to go because I think he reached his maximum level already and this is a little bit like the stock exchange. Let’s see what happens with the new coach and then Begic may be back.

I’ll stick to my CSKA Golden Rule, so Aaron Miles is my second trade this week. I’ve already opted to release Mirsad Turkcan because Semih Erden is back and so Turkcan will play fewer minutes. The game against Alba is a good one for him, however, but I want Tiago Splitter in my team no matter what; not because I think he will do well against Olimpija - Begic is tall and Vladimir Golubovic is aggressive and tough - but because I want to keep him for the remainder of the season.

My second trade is Terrell McIntyre, even when he will play against Barcelona in two weeks’ time and I don’t expect a big game for him then. Still, he should play well against Zalgiris this week. I have very limited money for the third trade, so I’m going to shock you all: Vedran Vukusic. He’s coming off a couple of good games and playing good minutes lately. He faces Cibona, so he can open the court with three-pointers. If they fall in, I will strike gold. If they don’t, well, erm… What’s next? Ah yeah, my team looks like this, then:

Terrell McIntyre - should be a good game for him against Zalgiris. A bit afraid that Mantas Kalnietis guards him.
Lynn Greer - Would have traded him if I had a fourth. That game against Unicaja in Malaga doesn’t look good.

Jonas Maciulis - The Bull is ready to go against the entire Montepaschi backcourt. He played well vs. L.Rytas this weekend.

Rimantas Kaukenas - I don’t like to have players that face each other, but I expect Kaukenas AND Maciulis to do well.

Juan Carlos Navarro - It’s a make-or-break game for Barcelona to win its group. Expect “La Bomba” to deliver.

Chris Warren - Well, I had other priorities, to be honest. Warren is solid and plays at home against a high-scoring team.

Tiago Splitter - Chose him over teammate Igor Rakocevic. Should stay in my fantasy team for good.

Andre Hutson - Has been rock-solid lately and is still underpriced. He’s had good games in Badalona before.

Vedran Vukusic - The big gamble. Hopefully he will read the game well and bomb Alain Koffi and Pape Badiane from downtown.

Mike Batiste - Honestly, I would have prefered Nikola Pekovic, but Batiste should do well against Regal FCB.

As usual, good luck, make wise choices and see you next week!

Fantasy Challenge: Follow your own tips!

Another week is over and once again, my team finished somewhere in the top half of the “middle-of-nowhere” range. Across the board, my players performed well (8 out of 10 were between 9.9 and 22.0) but none went for an extraordinary MVP-level performance. But I have to say that I am happy with the trades I made: Bringing in Zoran Planinic and Nikola Pekovic were good moves, as the two combined for 35.2 ranking points instead of the 0 I would have gotten without the changes.

On the other hand, I don’t know what happened to Emir Preldzic, who made a nice 0 and Mirza Begic who threw up came up with 9.9 ranking points in just 4 minutes of play. I would suggest to Mirza that he be sick a bit more often but play 40 minutes despite throwing up constantly. I have to think on my forward rotation a bit this weekend, as Immanuel McElroy seems to be on the downturn as well. We will see what comes up.

If you check on who I advised you to sign last week, I can only say, “Christophe, why do you tell the guys out there who to sign but don’t take the guys yourself?” Carlos Jimenez (23.1), Mike Hall (18.7) and Charles Smith (27.0) were three names I mentioned. And I didn’t pick up any of these three, despite having an unused trade. No wonder I have a new favorite song:

Luckily, the standings still show that I’m not doing everything wrong. I am currently ranked at the edge of the Top 10 and so I’m still in the race for new K1X shoes or some Euroleague goodies. At the top of the table is still the fight between djalix and EVICROCK, separated by only 0.5 points. Looks pretty tough at the moment and neither player has given up on winning those Euroleague Final Four tickets.

And because I was so harsh on myself before when I was talking about the moves I did not make, I would like to mention my current good ranking in two other fantasy leagues. In the league hosted by our friends at Basketsession, I am currently ranked 4th, which may sound nothing special, but I am in front of French Euroleague fantasy guru Bricko and his CSKA Brickowski team. Additionally, another 4th place is in the books for me in the Interbasket Private League, which I also consider a nice performance.

Have a nice weekend…

NIKEiD Fantasy Challenge: Now what?

Currently, it looks like a lot of decisions have been made in the Euroleague fantasy league. The time to gain sure credits is nearly over, and only a few players are still available at reasonable prices to give you good credit boosts. I’m thinking here mainly about players like Mirza Begic (49 credits) or Sergio Llull (26 credits). But if you don’t have them in your team already, it’s really time to think about what your goal is.

My personal moves

As for myself, I have enough credits right now so I have to check which players can bring me the most credits for the least value right now: This is the reason why I’m selling Ersan Ilyasova, who has not been in his best shape recently. He’s still worth decent value, so it’s a good move in order to buy a more productive player. I’ll use this money to replace one of my two young point guards and give Zygimantas Janavicius away to bring in Zoran Planinic: He should be able to bring up some good numbers in Serbia against Partizan Belgrade. In the paint, I’m bringing in Nikola Pekovic, as I think that he’s now at a good value of 57 credits and should easily dominate against Asseco Prokom.

OUT: Ersan Ilyasova (FC Barcelona) and Zygimantas Janavicius (Zalgiris Kaunas).

IN: Zoran Planinic (CSKA Moscow) and Nikola Pekovic (Panathinaikos).

Take care of injury minutes

A good move to get interesting players right now is to check out the Injury List for possible “playing-time gainers.” For example, Marcus Haislip is out for three weeks so Boniface N’Dong should see some major playing time this week. Additionally, Carlos Jimenez will probably have a nice game in the absence of the high-flying US player.

With Marko Milic injured and Union Olimpija playing against ALBA Berlin, it may be interesting to gamble on Damjan Rudez who should profit from Milic’ absence. He is currently a bargain at 22 credits and if you want to take some risks, he may bring you 10 or more ranking points this week.

See who’s hot right now

Players often go on streaks, by which I mean they play a few good games in a row. One of these players currently is Mike Hall of AJ Milano. He was the MVP of the last game day, despite his team’s loss in Madrid. Hall managed to score 28 ranking points, however, and he is currently priced at only 30.4 credits: a sure winner in terms of credits first of all, but he looks particularly hot as he came up with a valiant 18 in the weekend’s domestic league game against Air Avellino. AJ Milano will play at home against Panionios, and the chances to earn the 10% bonus with Hall are also quite good.

Another guy who is hot right now is Charles Smith; the US-born guard will play against his former team Real Madrid, and the chances of him coming up with a great scoring effort for his Efes Pilsen squad are good. At 36.7 ranking points, Smith is a good value with which to fill up your roster, and his 18-point performance this weekend in the Turkish league shows that Smith is ready to score.

Tips from the Euroleague Fantasy boss: Week 4

Hello everyone, this is Javier Gancedo, always from Euroleague Basketball. Looks like it has been yet another great fantasy week for me. I am beginning to get worried after modifying all my previous entries because of injuries. Seriously. We’ll see what happens this week.

It has been a fantastic week in Euroleague, especially the nine-game marathon last night. We all finished at 2am, totally destroyed but happy to have experienced the best regular season in Euroleague Basketball history.:Buzzer-beaters, Louis Bullock, double-overtime games, Vlado Ilievski missing again at the buzzer, close games, passion, drama, upsets… Seriously, the Euroleague is getting better than ever, and it is impressive that CSKA is the only unbeaten team, despite being without J.R. Holden and Matjaz Smodis.

Before anything else, I would like you to introduce our new online game, the Eurocup FabFive Challenge!

fabfive.eurocupbasketball.com

This is a very down-to-earth, exciting game in which you can pick five players, one from each range, with no restrictions whatsoever. If you want to have five point guards, go ahead. Five centers? Be my guest. Just keep in mind that players may move from one group to another depending on their index rating and you will need to trade every week to have a valid, five-player team. The trades after Week 1 should be exciting. Players can go from the top group to the bottom one if they have a really bad night, and vice versa! Just build your team and maybe we all can put together a private league. OK, well, keep reading and then make a team, but don’t forget: It’s a great game, we all think.

As for Fantasy Challenge, I had a pretty decent week with good trades, especially Emir Preldzic. Preldzic rolled against Olimpija, showing he is the closest thing to Toni Kukoc in 1990 that European basketball has seen lately. If he keeps developing, Preldzic will be a hell of a player, mark my words. I moved up to 9th place in the BallinEurope private league and yes, I erased some of my deficit in the Kuqo situation. I even cracked the Top 40 with a different team. I’m telling you all this because bad times will come, no doubt about it. Of course, beating EVICROCK will be tough, as he is doing very, very well.

As for this week, I wanted to trade early because honestly, I wanted you all to know about FabFive as soon as possible. I may regret my trades before the deadline and if so, I will notify you right away - especially since it’s quite probable that someone will get injured, anyway.

Remember when I told you Nikos Zisis would be there until Holden comes back? I’ve changed my mind, since Belgrade is a tough place to play and I expect the game to be low-scoring. I also traded Bracey Wright due to the showdown against Tau Ceramica and then removed Felipe Reyes because Kerem Gonlum may out-rebound him. Those are my three trades this week.

I believe Armani Jeans Milano has been playing well lately and, since they play Panionios On Telecoms at home, I think it’s time for them to do well in front of their fans. Therefore, I added Michael Hall at power forwards and centers, a big moneymaker. My main move this week was picking up Chris Warren of Air Avellino. Warren plays against Cibona and even while Rawel Marshall will also be extremely motivated, I am sure that the Avellino swingman will have a good game. At point guard, I had to choose between Lynn Greer and Earl Calloway. I’m going with Greer for the sake of Euroleague experience, even though I wrote the Cibona-Olympiacos game report and Calloway was just UNSTOPPABLE in the third quarter.

So my team goes like this:

Aaron Miles - Another Cajasol playmaker that leaves the team and becomes a Euroleague star. Oh my.
Lynn Greer - Should have an interesting shootout against Dewarick Spencer in Le Mans.

Jonas Maciulis - The Bull returns home to play Regal FC Barcelona. He should be a solid choice.
Emir Preldzic - Has been unstoppable lately and is way underpriced.
Sani Becirovic - Sanny Boy is the Euroleague superstar he was several years ago. In top shape right now.
Chris Warren - Again the X factor. He should be ready to do well against Cibona.

Mirza Begic - It’s more than seven extra credits in our teams. You have him, right? C’mon, don’t lie.
Mike Hall - I liked what I saw in Madrid this week. Few power forwards are playing more minutes right now.
Mirsad Turkcan - Even when Andre Hutson knows him well, Turkcan should out-rebound EVERYBODY!
Mike Batiste - Big Mike always plays better on the road and the game in Sopot should be no exception.

As always, good luck in the Fantasy Challenge… And try the Fab Five, the great game with the gangsta name!

Tips from the Euroleague Fantasy boss: Week 2

Hello everybody at BallinEurope.com. It was an exciting Euroleague week, with big wins and major upsets. In my humble opinion, the best game came in Ljubljana. It was actually a boring game while Tau was leading by 21, as Olimpija was allowing too many shots. Olimpija improved with a zone defense and with an outstanding Marko Milic, the heart and soul of his team. This man has green-and-white blood running through his veins and Olimpija should retire his number as soon as he gives up basketball, just like they did with Ivo Daneu. Olimpija completed an unthinkable comeback with a big three-pointer by Jonathan Wallace. Mirza Teletovic, who had missed twice from downtown in the final minute, had the balls to fire the game-winning shot with 2.7 seconds to go. I still wonder why Vlado Ilievski got the final possession instead of Milic. Last season, he took Matjaz Smodis one-on-one to make Olimpija beat CSKA. Oh well…

I must admit that few things amaze me in the Euroleague these days after more than five years watching almost each and every game, but Daniel Ewing was incredible on Wednesday. Again, the game itself was below-average, but Ewing stole the show in the second half with six three-pointers and 28 points after the break. I like the 1-2 combination Asseco Prokom has with Ewing and David Logan. Good to see that Pat Burke is still active, running and looking good. Not only because I like him, but also because I was born the very same day as him. Which means that if I get back in shape, I can still kick some butt on any basketball court.

As for fantasy, my BallinEurope team had a decent week and I moved up to the 19th place. Not bad, but I see Pablo Malo de Molina of ACB.com ranking 6th overall and that, of course, worries me.  I scored 76.6 points in my fight against Ermal Kuqo, which, of course, is not the best score. Especially if you consider that Ermal is 75th overall. We haven’t decided on the bet, but I’ll see what I will do. After all, right now I have nothing to lose. I have a cursed team with Perperoglou and Morandais, who has been unstoppable so far … things can only get better.

I decided to change my strategy a little bit, since I didn’t succeed in earning credits. This week I earned exactly 0.06 credits overall. Great, huh? Here I am, getting ready to apply for a degree in worldwide economy. What the hell… Like I said, I am going to try something: combining players who I think will play really well with others that will give me some money. My first plan went down when Pops Mensah-Bonsu got injured. The fact that Willie Deane ain’t healthy either made me change my mind, so out went Sergio Llull, Pops and Rawle Marshall.

As such, my team looks like this:

Daniel Ewing - no Deane in Zalgiris, plus he’s unstoppable.
Nikos Zisis - no Holden, more minutes

Saso Ozbolt - once you Pops, you cannot stop. Mensah-Bonsu’s injury keep him here.
Sani Becirovic - nothing like playing with your ex (Hey, I’m only talking basketball here!)
Bracey Wright - comes off a good game and Fener misses Omer Onan
Stratos Perperoglou - giving him a little love after his -6 game

Mike Batiste - Taking a little risk here - Mike should be alright against Nancy.
Mirsad Turkcan - as long as Erden is out, he’ll stay in my team
Felipe Reyes - Madrid must bounce back against CSKA and Felipe should be key
Mirza Begic - I would need to commit dozens of turnovers to lose credits

The K1X prizes are way too good to let them go. I know it’s a disadvantage to publish my team here, but we are all enjoying it, aren’t we? Enjoy the Fantasy Challenge, make wise choices and see you next week!

BallinEurope Fantasy Division: New deadline

We are incredible happy to see how many fantasy junkies have already joined our private division. But because of the Monday opening game, the Euroleague has blocked any opportunity to join our league at the moment. So the initial deadline of Wednesday had to be changed because we got a multitude of people that still want to win the incredible prize of two Final Four tickets and we don’t want to let them out.

So, in order to give equal opportunities to everybody, we changed our entry deadline to Tuesday 28th October 2008. Check here if you want to know how to participate and the rules.

Want to win Euroleague Final 4 Tickets?

Finally, the NikeID Fantasy Challenge is about to start. And of course, BallinEurope will again have a great private league. But we have some major changes to come this year, one of them is the great prizes that you can win. So let’s start immediately.

The winner of the BallinEurope.com Private League will receive

Two entrance tickets for the Euroleague Final Four in Berlin

Yes, you heard it right, the winner will get two tickets for the biggest European basketball event of the year. We are very proud that Euroleague Basketball offered us this fantastic prize for our readers. Furthermore, we have several basketball clothing and shoe packages to offer and Euroleague branded gadgets and giveaways. So prepare your rosters well and join our division.

And because we have these extraordinary prices this year, we had to set up a couple of rules for our Private League.

BallinEurope.com Private League RULES

• League Name: BallinEurope.com - Password: ballineurope
• 1 team per user
• Entry deadline: Wednesday 22nd October 2008 at 18 CET new deadline: Tuesday 28th October because of the current lock down of the Euroleague Fantasy game
  
• No additional teams after the deadline
• The winner is the first in overall ranking at the end of the Top 16 competition
• Be sure to have only one team per user in the league at the deadline. All users with multiple teams will get kicked out of the league

We wish you good luck and give you regular updates on the standings. I am participating as well, and I really want to improve in the rankings as I finished only fifth in our division last year and the general ranking goal for me this season is the Top 1000.

Last-second choices for the NIKEiD Fantasy Challenge

The deadline for the Euroleague Fantasy game is approaching. Monday October 20th at 19h30 CET is the time when all the changes will be locked and your teams are set for the first round of competition. So here we go with some tips for your last-minute choices for your team in order to be competitive.

• Check well who is injured or just came back

What is important in this game is to have no injured player in your team. Of course, you can’t avoid players that turn their ankle during the warm-up but at least take a look at our Euroleague Injury list and see who is a long term injury case. The more critical choices are those players that are on day-to-day status. You can go for a gamble and hope that they play but you never know. Players that just came back from an injury are probably not the best choice either as they won’t be in full shape. Because of these issues, I did not select my initial first choice Julius Jenkins (ALBA Berlin - 62 credits) as he has a minor injury since the game against Ludwigsburg during last week. I will however keep an eye on what he did today and then take a decision.

The injury list should in any case be your best friend when it comes to making your teams. It does not only help you to get rid of players that won’t play, but it will also give you advice on who are the players that eventually play more minutes (which means normally also more ranking points). To stay with the case of Julius Jenkins, his eventual injury would give most likely more minutes to Immanuel McElroy (ALBA Berlin - 49 credits) so that he may be a very interesting choice.

• Do not select your favorite players or Rookies

A typical error I made in the beginning and that I am still doing and hardly fighting to avoid it is to select players that you like because they play flashy or do things on the court that you like to see. In order to make a successful team, you have to be very neutral with your feelings and just go for the stat sheet. You can find stats of all the players in the different league websites or on pages like KeyHoops. So don’t do it like Theo Papaloukas on his Fantasy team as he selected himself (of course) or a multitude of former team mates or current Greek National team players. UPDATE: Theo has changed his team in between.

The goal of the game is to score as much Fantasy points as possible and mostly your favorite players don’t do so nor are the Rookies. Brandon Jennings (Roma - 59 credits) may be an extraordinary talent but I doubt that he will contribute a lot, at least not in the beginning of the season. For a similar value, you can find a Euroleague veteran like Carlos Cabezas (Unicaja - 56 credits) who is far less spectacular but I think that he will give you a lot more Fantasy points than the Roma rookie. However, this does not mean that I selected Carlos on my team.

• Select players that win games

It may sound small but the 10% bonus that a player gets on his production when the team wins is very important. As you only select players that score lots of Fantasy points, this bonus can be very big. Juan Carlos Navarro (FC Barcelona - 73 credits) scored big last night against the LA Lakers and the 10% bonus would have been worthier than the production of some rotation player of a losing team.

The way I chose is that I selected my high-value players from the winning teams because the chances to get the bonus on guys that produce a lot of Fantasy points is much higher. On the other hand, the smaller teams have more often players that go for bigger individual performances because their rosters are not as packed as the Panathinaikos or Olympiacos squads. Somebody like Ricardo Greer (SLUC Nancy - 67 credits) may be a very interesting choice as Nancy plays their opener at home against a jet-lagged FC Barcelona. And Ricardo Greer is a former Euroleague top performer with Strasbourg and he just comes from a 22pts (58%), 4rebs, 2asts and 6 provoked fouls effort in the French league.

• Cheap players stay cheap

Another error that you can avoid is to select too many “cheap” players. Players like Zygimantas Janavicius (Zalgiris Kaunas - 16 credits) or Sergio Llull (Real Madrid - 15 credits) may see lots of minutes in the beginning of the season because of the specific situations in their teams. However, this does not mean that they score a lot of Fantasy points first, and secondly, their value won’t move up that much because of the limitations in player price variations. So even if Llull plays well during Raul Lopez’ (Real Madrid - 48 credits) absence, you won’t get an interesting value back at the moment you have to take him out of your team when Lopez comes back.

Still, this does not mean that you can not gamble and take a player like this. If I remember right, there have always been bargains that made extraordinary seasons like Jordi Trias (FC Barcelona - 45 credits) two seasons ago or Nikola Pekovic (Panathinaikos - 94 credits) last year. So the goal is to find the steals of the season 2008-2009. And the best way to find some is to see who are the players that have had a particularly bad season last year because of minor injuries for example and that are now back in full force. Kostas Tsartsaris (Panathinaikos - 27 credits) may be a player to fulfill this role.

• Inside players are money in the bank

One of the main rules you should follow is to put most of your money into big men. With the European way to count assists, your guards won’t get John Stockton figures. However, a rebound is a rebound anywhere in the world. It is a lot easier to grab 4 rebounds in the Euroleague than to dish out 4 assists in an away game in Italy for example. Try to find guards that rebound well and shoot high percentages and put a lot of money into versatile power forwards. Felipe Reyes (Real Madrid - 74 credits) may look very expensive but he is always presents with lots of rebounds and high percentage shots.

• Do not overestimate my advice

Well, you still have to do your own choices. And I am not a reference in Fantasy Basketball as showed my two-thousand-something place last season. Anyhow, I try to give you my personal advices and nobody obliges you to follow them. But at least, if you see my team in the top rankings at the end of the season, you will know how I set it up.

Don’t forget though to join our Private BallinEurope League as you can win 2 entrance tickets for the Euroleague Final 4 in Berlin. The deadline for joining is on Wednesday and check here to see how this exactly works.

NIKEiD Fantasy Challenge: the interview

After I spoke already about the different rule changes made by the Euroleague for their new Fantasy Challenge, I wanted to know from the organization  what were the reasons for them. Well here is the interview I had with Javier from Euroleague.net.

A major change in the rules has occurred this year in the trading rules. Only three trades in general are allowed now during the regular season. What was the goal of this change?
Hm, I guess I didn’t express myself very well in the article, which I just edited when I saw this question. Of course, three trades PER WEEK will be allowed from now until the end of the regular season. We will open unlimited trades until the start of the Top 16 and then three per week again until the end of the game, at the end of the Top 16. The game works really well the way it is, so there is not need to make major changes. That would have limited the teams way too much.

Another new feature is the possibility to create ten teams per player. What does the Euroleague expect from this change?
Well, a lot of people get frustrated because their team loses chances in the beginning of the season. The more teams, the better. Of course, we wouldn’t like to have single users with hundreds of teams, as it happened in other famous online games like the outstanding SuperManager ACB.com. But we agreed that five users per team was limiting people way too much. We started with one team per users and increased to number to 5 and now to 10.

How much work would you consider that is necessary to be successful participant in the Fantasy League?
First of all, you have to work outside the Euroleague, because if you win the week, you don’t win prizes - believe me, I ranked first AND second one week in 2006-07 and all I got was the entire Euroleague Office joking about me not getting anything. Being honest, you have to pick up players that will give you credits in the beginning, those who are overpriced. The more minutes a player stays on court, the more he will produce, too. Analyzing opponents and injuries are also a key feature. A good trick for me if this: if a starting Euroleague player gets injured, I usually get his backup and his potential matchup in the opponent team. It always works fine…

Will you also have Euroleague players that are competing in the League again?
We are preparing a surprise which will be unveiled soon. You all have to wait until Monday, though… And don’t forget to make your teams!

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