BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

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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Courtesy the Euroleague folks, BallinEurope brings a compendium of facts and figures spanning history and record books regarding tomorrow night’s slate of a half-dozen games – plus lines on the games and highlight clips. Enjoy!

CSKA Moscow vs. Anadolu Efes Istanbul
• CSKA leads the all-time series between the teams, 8-7.
• Nenad Krstic has scored in double figures in each of his last 16 Euroleague appearances dating back to the 2003-04 season.
• Andrei Kirilenko and Nenad Krstic lead the Euroleague in index rating with at averages of 27.8 and 21.5 per game, respectively.
• Kirilenko also leads the Euroleague in blocked shots (3.2 bpg).
• Milos Teodosic is ranked second in the Euroleague in assists this season with a career-high 5.6 assists per game.
• Darjus Lavrinovic needs three more blocks reach 100 for his Euroleague career. With his next block, Lavrinovic will tie former CSKA big man Terence Morris for 12th place all-time.
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BallinEurope gets things rolling on Saturday with highlight clips – okay, some links to online stuff You Should Read as well, but the main point is highlight clips, right? This morning, then, a quick look at some excellent performances turned in in last night’s NBA action from the Continent’s top players. Starring Tony Parker, Luol Deng, Tiago Splitter, Ty Lawson, and of course a certain Spanish point guard you may have heard something about…

• Tony Parker contributed perhaps his best NBA performance of 2011-12 last night, with 20 points and nine assists to lead the San Antonio Spurs to a 99-83 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers. Fellow TrueHoop blog 48 Minutes of Hell does some “Statistical Sleuthing” in an excellent piece on Parker’s play in the paint and at the rim this season, for ages a strength for the Spur.

After crunching the numbers, 48 Minutes’ Aaron McGuire deduces that “The fact is, Tony Parker has been playing atrociously, *especially* at the rim, and it’s tough to say whether this should make Spurs fans excited or terrified. Why excited? It’s easy to simply chalk this up to small sample size and assume he gets better as the year goes on, which would be an instant improvement to San Antonio’s already gelling offense. Terrified is more obvious — if this represents a permanent change in his game, the Spurs are essentially down to *no* all-star caliber offensive players.”

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So 2011 may have been few people’s favorite year personally, European basketball fans have certainly got to be taking solace in the fact that the past 12 months featured a seriously great run of Continental-flavored hoops.

To wit, in 2011, we enjoyed:

• an exciting round of Euroleague playoffs which included FC Barcelona’s surprising tournament-round exit and culminated in storied franchise Panathinaikos bagging its third EL trophy in five years;

• in domestic leagues, another weird Bundesliga playoff tournament, another controversial Greek tourney, and from Italy and Spain second-place shockers Bennet Cantù and Bizkaia Bilbao Basket advancing;

• lots of European superstars battling it out in the NBA playoffs, particularly on the Western Conference side, with Tony Parker, Pau Gasol, Marc Gasol, Joakim Noah, Luol Deng and of course Dirk Nowitzki proving so key to their teams’ successes (or lack thereof);

• the Eurobasket 2011 tournament hosted in the world’s basketball-maddest country which ultimately inspired Team Serbia coach Dusan Ivkovic to opine that “this has been the strongest European Championship in history…” (and, judging only from the star content alone, BiE would probably agree, despite a general loathing for such hyperbole directly after an event);

• some awesome schadenfreude-laced moments as NBA refugees came to play on the Continent during the player lockout, plus all the incredibly amusing speculation on names beginning with Kobe Bryant; and finally

• the close to the 2011-12 Euroleague regular season with a week 10 that featured some crazy dogfights for entry and positioning in the Top 16 round, including a great do-or-die game between Emporio Armani Milano and Partizan Belgrade.

Olympic Games or no, how can basketball year 2011 be topped? On the first day of the new year, BallinEurope takes a last brief look back at the most popular stories we ran in 2011. Relive one killer 365 days of European roundball once more below.

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Before BallinEurope signs off for 2011, let’s give a late Christmas gift to the dunkaholics out there, shall we? Below runs a collection compiled through the year featuring dunks by Europeans, on Europeans or perhaps simply in Continental games.

The first 20 will listed by competition, followed the top five runners-up and the champion jam of the year. Who will be no. 1? Read (and watch) on to find out…

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BallinEurope got this note posted in comments on the recently-run piece regarding Žalgiris Kaunas fans raucously singing the national anthem prior to games in response to a Euroleague ruling for 2011-12 which bans formal performance of anthems.

Ran the comment: “BallinEurope, you can update your article with the pic i posted: Žalgiris fans showing this during, after anthem.”

Well, yes. BiE will do that.

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In the spirit of ’11, BallinEurope’ll call it “Occupy Euroleague.” CEO Jordi Bertomeu made official a Euroleague decree at the start of the 2011-12 season which banned the performance of national anthems before games. (BiE kinda agrees with this dictum, actually, as most rosters are stocked with Europeans while clubs are owned/controlled by corporations and private interests.) Nevertheless, fans in Lithuania have taken it upon themselves to perform a little defiance in response.

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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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It’s one Euroleague game remaining in 2011 for each of the regular-season entrants, and with only four teams mathematically eliminated – Asseco Prokom, SLUC Nancy, Spirou Charleroi, Union Olimpija – a great many of the 16 matches on tonight and tomorrow night’s slate remain significant. BallinEurope takes a look at the opportunities for advancement into the next round below; for reasons of complexity (you’ll see what BiE means when we get to Group A), these will be listed by group in backwards alphabetical order.

Group D. This one’s easy; the top four seeds for the Top 16 draw, in order, are FC Barcelona, Montepaschi Siena, Unics Kazan and Galatasaray Medical Park.

Group C. Real Madrid, Maccabi Tel Aviv and Anadolu Efes have clinched the nos. 1, 2, and 3 spots, respectively, in Group C. In a case of win-by-four-or-go-home, Emporio Armani Milano must beat Partizan Belgrade in Hala Pionir by two field goals or more in order to nip the Black-and-Whites for the fourth seed in the group.

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Though Žalgiris Kaunas club director/former interim coach Vitoldas Massalski has categorically stated that no changes to the Greens’ roster will be forthcoming until the end of the Euroleague regular season, this can hardly stop the speculative future-gazing in Lithuania and beyond.

To wit: Yesterday, the Lietuvos Rytas website ran a report stating that Milovan Rakovic could be heading back from loan to his contracted club Montepaschi Siena in January. Siena would naturally like to bolster up in the middle for a deep run into the Euroleague playoffs in lieu of the injured Ksistof Lavrinovic.

Žalgiris’ prospects for advancement aren’t exactly dim, but they’re currently mired at the bottom of Group B, in a three-way tie with Brose Baskets Bamberg and KK Zagreb at 2-5. Losses vs. Panathinaikos tonight and Bamberg next week would certainly doom the Greens to elimination; even a 2-1 finish by the Lithuanian side might not be enough.

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