Yarone’s Friday’s joints

Sofoklis Schortsianitis (Olympiacos) – No shot attempts at all and only one foul in 7:42 minutes. Only once before has Schortsianitis finished a Euroleague game without a single shot attempt and that was when he played only two minutes.

Milos Teodosic (Olympiacos) – How often did you get to see this Serbian scorer finish with zero three-point attempts in 14:40? It happened once last season. If this were to continue this season, it would mean Yannakis is turning the kid from a scoring machine into a true team player. Keep an eye out.

Loren Woods (Zalgiris) set a Euroleague career high with 17 points and nine defensive rebounds against Pao, who have one of the best front lines in Europe.

Tamar Slay (Avelino) had his Euroleague debut as well against a Greek team, but we won’t mention this game on his resume, with his 1-of-10 from the field and -11 VAL.

Marcus Brown (Maccabi) – On Monday, Brown took two flights to arrive in Tel Aviv in the afternoon from Kaunas. The following day, he took two more flights to get from Tel Aviv to Zagreb with his new team. In total, Brown has probably had more flights than practices with his new team. Nevertheless, he played 27:44.

Willie Deans (Zalgiris) - In his Euroleague debut, Deans finished 1-of-10 from the field and -9 VAL against Pao.

Tau Ceramica Vitoria (ACB) used the shortest rotation this week with only eight players. Efes used nine, with one player on the floor for just 22 seconds. All other teams used between nine and 12 players

Rawle Marshall (Cibona) – Simply fun to watch. 20 points, 5-of-9 from the field, 3 rebounds, 3 steals, zero turnovers, 7 fouls drawn, and 29 VAL in a Euroleague debut. All cold numbers. Bottom line: Simply fun to watch.

Dimitris Diamantidis (Panathinaikos) – The best defender award winner for the past four years and one of the top three ball stealers on The Continent played 25:42 against Zalgiris with zero steals.

Dewarick Spencer & David Bluthenthal (Le Mans) – Now this could be a weekly check: Which of these two took more shots for his team? This time, Bluth wins 14-13 and also scores better accuracy.

Theodoros Papaloukas (Olympiacos) - 2,380 days have passed between 18/04/02 and today. Back then, Theo played his last Euroleague game for the Reds; yesterday, he made his rdappearance. Back then, he finished the game with 26:53 in playing time, 8 points, 3 rebounds and a VAL of 16. Today, he played only 90 seconds less, still scored 8 points, still grabbed 3 rebounds, and notched a VAL of 15 …consistency over a six-year span.

Avelino (LEGA) – In its Euroleague debut, the small Italian team registered a VAL of 36. Often this is less than the best weekly VAL from a single player.

Armani Jeans Milano (LEGA) – The game at Moscow was far from Milano’s Euroleague debut but under the new hat and management, expectations were different. Just like Avelino, another Italian team finished a game against a Final Four contender with a poor VAL rating of 36.

Tau (ACB) and Fenerbahce (TBL) combined for 52 attempts from long range on a night on which neither surpassed 30%.

Drew Nicholas (Panathinaikos) – After three seasons in a row over 40% from long range, the US shooter started his career in green with an 0-for-3 performance from long range.

Juan Carlos Navarro (Barcelona) – La Bomba bombed on the NBA runnerups 34 points less than a week ago. Last night, against SLUC Nancy empire, Navarro celebrated his return to the Euroleague with only four points and 1-of-8 from the field.

Derrick Sharp (Maccabi) – The veteran didn’t play a single second the entire game in Zagreb. The last time a Maccabi coach chose not to use Derrick was on 6 January 2000. After a 195-game streak and 3,213 days, a new count begins. Back then, in the first week of the millennium, Maccabi was just 1-of-6 from long range. Last night they showed a poor 4-or-16. Whether that’s a coincidence or not, you be the judge.

Oguz Savas (Fenerbahce) – The Turkish center is a decent rebounder, sometimes even more, but in Vitoria spent more than 23 minutes on the court and finished without a single rebound. This happened to Savas only once all of last season and back then, he played only five minutes.

Milos Vujanic (Efes) is officially back. The Serbian point guard beat his former team by a single point and was his team’s top scorer with 17 and just a single missed shot. The last time Vujanic scored more than 17 in a Euroleague game was on 9 March 2005 (that’s 1,324 days if you’re curious), when his Fortitudo Bologna won at Zalgiris by a single point as well and Vujanic had 18.

Real Madrid (ACB) – No fewer than eight players wrote a double-digit VAL in the 21-point cruise to victory against Olimpija.

Ibrahim Jabber, Ray Allan, Rodrigo De La Fuente, Brandon Jennings and Sanice Becirovic (Roma) – Coach Repesa’s backcourt combined for 4-of-18 inside the arc against Alba.

Nana Mensah-Bonsu (Joventut) had a very busy night under both baskets. Around Joventut’s rim he blocked three shots but on the other end was blocked three times as well. Not many players get to experience such activity on both ends on the floor.

Partizan (YUBA) and Maccabi (BSL) – Both lost by a single basket difference, the smallest margins of the first week, but in both cases it was after a three pointer at the buzzer that only made it look closer than it really was.

Alba (BBL) – No less than 1,723 days, since 4 February 2004, when Alba won their last Euroleague game. It was a 16 point triumph over Efes. John Best, Jovo Stanojevic, Marko Pesic and DeJuan Collins were the top scorers for Alba then. Not a single player on Alba has survived on the team since that season.

Brandon Jennings (Lottomatica) – The most standout number in the game that took Jennings’ Euroleague virginity is his 22 minutes with just a single turnover. Brandon also took nine shots from the field, more than any other Roma player yesterday.

Montepaschi (LEGA) were shooting better outside the arc (48% with 12 made) than inside it (40.5% with 15 made) in the nine-point win over Prokokm.

Boniface Ndong, Marcus Haislip and Robert Archibald (Unicaja) – The team’s three big men were also its three top scorers with 14, 13 and 11 points, respectively, over Le Man’s bigs.

Alain Koffi (Le Mans) – The athletic big man has finished each of his five seasons in the ULEB Cup and Euroleague with seven to nine assists total. On Wednesday night at Unicaja, the local stat guys bestowed him with no less than three, obviously a career high, and a great start to set a new season record as well.

(In case you are too shy to leave a comment here, you can always contact Yarone by sending him an email at arbel@ballineurope.com)

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.

Euroleague: Regal FC Barcelona, Spain

Jaime Martínez Lafargue from the Spanish website Solobasket explains us today why FC Barcelona should be followed this season. Solobasket is one of the most popular websites about Basketball in Spain and offers now also content in English.

Overall record prediction: 7-3

FC Barcelona comes from a troubled season with a coach replacement and poor performances in most of their games. The team failed to advance to the Euroleague Final Four and lost to iurbentia Bilbao in the Spanish Cup quarterfinals. Despite of it all, Xavi Pascual –the coach that replaced Dusko Ivanovic- managed to get the best from his players and reach the ACB Finals.

Ersan Ilyasova played his best basketball since he arrived to the ACB during the playoff and is still growing. He is almost unstoppable right now. Fran Vázquez also stepped up after the departure of Ivanovic and is recovering the enthusiasm and athleticism of some seasons ago. Some other players started to display better performances as the last season came to the endas well.

This overall improvement and the negative answer of the desired Messina to the offer of FC Barcelona has given Pascual a new chance to prove his coaching skills with an elite team. Besides, the new chief of basketball operation Joan Creus –assistant coach of the Spanish National Team that won the World Championships in Japan- put together a renewed roster full of talent. Without a doubt, the comeback of Juan Carlos Navarro from his brief stint in the NBA is the star signing of the club for the new season. Besides, former CSKA Australian center David Andersen, guards Víctor Sada and Andre Barret, the Czech forward Lubos Barton and the late addition of seven footer Daniel Santiago set up what could be arguably the best roster in the ACB. Thus, FC Barcelona must contend for the Euroleague.

The new Euroleague regular season format, reducing the groups to six teams, will give top clubs a more relaxed first stage. FC Barcelona should be one of these teams, and the ten games of its regular season must be a warm up phase before facing the Top 16. Panathinaikos and Montepaschi are the big rivals in the group B, and Barça should compete with them to end the group stage within the three first positions. This team is better than the last season one, so FC Barcelona must be considered as a candidate to play the Final Four.

Final Four: Olympiacos, FC Barcelona, Panathinaikos, Real Madrid.

Winner: Olympiacos

written by Jaime Martínez Lafargue

After the Olympics: What’s the future of Spain?

The Spanish national team is the most successful European team of recent years. The silver medal at the Olympics only confirmed this trend. Besides the coaching question that reigns at the moment, I will today look at the future in terms of player material.

Read more

Olympic Quarterfinals review

Today, the four quarterfinals of the Olympic men’s basketball tournament saw only one close game. Luckily, I had the opportunity to see at least the second half of this thriller.

Read more

Thursday rumors

How about Juan Carlos Navarro back to the Euroleague?
This is a tricky one, but it does seem very possible, though Mario Kasun and Roko Ukic need to be factored into the equation. Roko played a great season in Rome, where his team made it all the way to the finals before losing to Montepaschi Siena. We know that the Raptors drafted him in 2005, but do they really want or need him?

Ukic currently has a contract with FC Barcelona, the team that desires the return of Juan Carlos Navarro so badly. Kasun, who has already played in the NBA for the Orlando Magic, also has another year on his contract, but Barcelona is filled with centers and is rumored to be interested in Mark Gasol as well. So why not make a package deal in which Barcelona sends Kasun and Ukic to the Memphis Grizzlies to get Juan Carlos back?

It is a possible deal, but there are too many factors inluded to make this more than rumor:

UPDATE: There goes the gossip the Carlos could make €10 million for five years with Barcelona…

Willie Solomon will join Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Willie had a great season in Turkey this past year and was one of the top players in the Euroelague. Of course, anybody would want a guy like that. And if the coach wants you, the managers and team president will try anything to get that player. Now consider: This is Maccabi Tel Aviv, who just suffered a disappointing outcome in the Final Four - they really wanted to win that trophy but there was no way past CSKA. To match up with such a team, Maccabi must acquire players like Solomon; and don’t forget, Willie also thinks about the money, not only a nice team, which Maccabi has plenty of right now. The only thing that might scare off Maccabi fans at least: Willie likes to shoot - as a point guard.

Solomon to Maccabi:

Sarunas Jasikevicius leaves PAO and joins … CSKA.
Did you really think that CSKA Moscow would keep only the coach, Smodis and Trajan Langdon, while other teams try to assemble a team to beat CSKA? Not really, right? Especially with Moscow’s type of budget, you’d want to get another player that helps your team. Now wait: At what position does CSKA need help?

Let me think … man, this is hard to find out … how about shooting guard? Well, the team just signed Russian shooting guard Victor Keyru, so that isn’t open for more signings, but a point guard might be very helpful to CSKA. We all know that they have Papaloukas, but many believe he’s past his prime. Papaloukas might be a fine leader off the court and still a great player, but Jasikevicius could be just a perfect fit.

How would that work? Sarunas’ buyout price is €250,000 - pocket change for CSKA. They could even offer Sarunas a way better contract. Since Panathinaikos had a bad season and Sarunas was coming off the bench, they might look for another more point guard-like player.

Chances of Sarunas landing in Mosocow:

Terrell McIntrye will leave Siena.
Siena management has informed the press that they do not need to have Terrell next season. Well, I would not break up a team like Siena at all, but again a scoring point guard is not that hard to find. If you have read above that Panathinaikos is in need of a PG and if Sarunas is let go, this would be the next step for Terrell - at least when it comes to money.

Terrell McIntrye leaving Siena and joining PAO: