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Who win will Eurobasket?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ArkadiosV22
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Who win will Eurobasket?

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ArkadiosV22

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12 teams advance. 24 games so far to make somewhat safe conclusions.

Which team did impress you? Who do you think will win it at this point?

Also discuss surprising teams and disappointing teams.

The teams which surprised me are Turkey and Greece. The greatest disappointments are Lithuania and Spain.
 
There's nothing surpising about Greece's play so far. Turkey is a bit of a surprise simply because no one expected them to beat Lithuania.
 
No clue. Too early to say. I can't even say who will fight for the medals. In my opinion way too early.
 
Given what we've witnessed so far I now pick Greece (had previously chosen Spain). Turkey is also a strong candidate.
 
Before the tournament I had Spain on another level from other teams, now I think it's completely wide open. Greece and Turkey have played well but you can question how tough their groups were. France went undefeated but didn't impress in any of their wins. Spain looked like they got it back together against Slovenia then had another melt down in the 4th quarter.

The only thing I can say for sure is that Lithuania has just been bad, if they make it to the quarterfinals I'll be surprised.
 
Spain still the favorite imo. Their loss will do them good and they are still developing their game. Remember teams who almost died become very dangerous.
 
Spain still the favorite for me. Greece comes in 2nd, followed by Turkey and Serbia.

France is going to melt down for sure, they are not a great tournament team and rely on TP too much.

Poland can't use the "home court advantage" for too long.

The sleeper might be Croatia, they can get surprising results at times when their game is on.
 
Well here some stats about the Greek team after the first 3 games:

The highest total points scored in the tournament with 268
The highest game points scored in the tournament with 106
The highest average game points in the tournament with 89.3 pg
The second best defence in the tournament with 202
The largest margin points scored/recieved +66, or +22 average pg!
 
Too early to say for sure certainly. But I voted for Greece because so far they are easily the best team. The threats for them would be Spain, Slovenia, Turkey, Croatia, Serbia. I think France is overrated. But still it's too early to tell.
 
The teams who have impressed me so far:

1. Turkey. They showed awesome performance
2. Slovenia. Calderon said Slovenia showed the best games so far. I must agree.
3. Greece. They were always good. I went to watch Greece vs. Slovenia in preperations which ended +17 for slo..

Spain will probably get easily through the 1/4, I wouldn't be surprised if Lithuania still manages to get further, even Russia. I'm not impressed by France and don't think Serbia can get any of the medals.

Wait and we'll see. I am optimistic and hope we get to the semis. Then anything is possible.
 
Greece might have played better than everyone expected, and Spain much worse, but let's not get too excited in the spur of the moment....

The truth is, Greece played solidly, but in reality the fact that we beat FYROM and Israel with 25+ points means almost nothing. They were clearly at least 20% worse teams than us and we are known to dominate such oponents. Now, you gonna tell me that those "bad" teams pushed the mighty Croatia to the brink of losing... Well, from this (and the fact that we beat easily Croatia) I draw the conclusion that the overhyped Croatia is simply an average-good team that just has the potential to play some great games every now and then. It's definitely not the medal-contender everybody thought before the tournament (actually I think most were saying this mostly because they sucked in all the lates tournaments, so maybe now it would be time for their luck to change...). This explanation seems more sensible to me than the "Greece rules" one, even though I'd like for the latter one to be true... Come the end of the second round, we will surely know since we will have seen the game against France and also Croatia's behaviour...

But the real point here, is that the tournament starts at the quarter-finals. The knock-out games are totally different in the required mentality. Just remember Greece in the 2007 tourney. We sucked the whole first 2 phases, then on the quarter we sucked midgame beat Slovenia with that miracoulus run, and then we played a superb game (our best so far) against Spain in the semi. This inexperienced team we got now could as easily do the opposite...so dont get your hopes up just yet...

So, so far the most important conclusion for me is not that Greece is good, it's that Spain is in kind of bad shape. It can't be a coincidence that they lost 1 game, they came close to losing against the inexistent in basketball GB, and they won Slovenia in overtime. It's obvious that they are not performing up to their standards and if this continues, it could promote Greece from no2 in the predictions to no1 by the end of phase2.

So, yes, I will aggree with you and pick Greece right now, instead of Spain, but as I explained, not because we played "out of this world"-basketball and all the other bullsh!t that Greek journalists love to say. Just because I thought we were second favourite, and I see the first favourite performing much worse than expected, so we automatically get promoted to first for the time being...
 
I voted for Lithuania just for fun and because I really don't know, who's gonna win it. This is the most unpredictable Eurobasket I've ever seen.

I guess, Spain still is the main contender. Turkey looks very good too. Of course, we shouldn't underestimate Greece and Serbia either.
 
Dtown said:
Before the tournament I had Spain on another level from other teams, now I think it's completely wide open. Greece and Turkey have played well but you can question how tough their groups were. France went undefeated but didn't impress in any of their wins. Spain looked like they got it back together against Slovenia then had another melt down in the 4th quarter.

The only thing I can say for sure is that Lithuania has just been bad, if they make it to the quarterfinals I'll be surprised.
Click to expand...

Spain is not as good as they are always said to be. They are at their best a team of one star and a bunch of great role players doing their job. But this years team has much worse role players to help Gasol. Just seeing guys like Garbajosa, Llull, Claver, Cabezas, Lopez, Mumbru, Rubio - these are all role players that Spain is relying on to help Pau and not one of them is in the class or level to do so it seems.

So Spain is one star (Pau) and several great role players like Reyes, Marc Gasol, Fernandez, Navarro. Although Marc Gasol himself is also overrated. The rest of the team isn't much of anything to write home about. That's not enough to win a EuroBasket normally. Maybe they pull it out but it would be a struggle at a level like this considering that a bunch of their roster is subpar.
 
The most important thing about Spain is that everyone (including the players of course) can see that Spain is no longer neither untouchable neither undefeatable.

Got destroyed by Lith, lost to Serbia, almost got shocked by GB and went to Ot with Slovenia.

So, at this point why would the Turkish, French, Greek, Lithuanian and other players be afraid of them?

The psychological barrier is not there anymore, and like JPF once said:

"Unpossible is nothing."
 
In my opinion 2 are the strongest favorites .
1)Turkey is playing good basketball and looks stronger than ever.
2)Spain.. They are not in a good shape but they are strong and in the elimination stage games the the quality team wins...

After them, Greece sure plays sexy basketball . We look good and Greece is a european powerhouse but our team is new , our coach is new and we cant predict what will happen..

Serbia and Slovenia are the outsiders

So :
1)Turkey
2)Spain
3)Greece
4)Serbia-Slovenia
 
FIBA Europe Basket said:
Spain is not as good as they are always said to be. They are at their best a team of one star and a bunch of great role players doing their job. But this years team has much worse role players to help Gasol. Just seeing guys like Garbajosa, Llull, Claver, Cabezas, Lopez, Mumbru, Rubio - these are all role players that Spain is relying on to help Pau and not one of them is in the class or level to do so it seems.

So Spain is one star (Pau) and several great role players like Reyes, Marc Gasol, Fernandez, Navarro. Although Marc Gasol himself is also overrated. The rest of the team isn't much of anything to write home about. That's not enough to win a EuroBasket normally. Maybe they pull it out but it would be a struggle at a level like this considering that a bunch of their roster is subpar.
Click to expand...

Yep, they are a bunch of nobodies. That might be enough to win the World Championships, but not the Eurobasket. They are hopeless against the almighty Greek superstars.
 
Spain kind of reminds me the "dream teams" (add as many inverted commas as you can) after 2000 that had problems throughout the tournaments and ended up winning nothing.
 
I agree with Elaj, it's too early. Spain and Greece were my favourites and i still can vote for them, if i would make a prediction...
 
Captain CAAAVEMAAAAANNN!! said:
Yep, they are a bunch of nobodies. That might be enough to win the World Championships, but not the Eurobasket. They are hopeless against the almighty Greek superstars.
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First who said the Greeks were superstars? Spain has one star and that is Pau Gasol. Greece has two stars and that's Yannis Bourousis and Vasilios Spanoulis. Other than those 3 players everyone else is a role player for both teams that is relied on to play his role.

Spain has Marc Gasol doing decently, and Navarro and Fernandez, and Reyes as always are doing their part overall. But the rest of Spain's role players are all not doing their job. It's a big stark contrast to the Spain of previous years where they also had Jimenez, Calderon, a much much better Garbajosa, even Mumbru in the past was definitely better than now. The simple fact is Spain's roster is a lot weaker this year that they rely on Cabezas, Lopez, Llull, Claver, an 18 year old kid, and some old players that seem past their prime.

Now Greece as you call "superstars" is a bit different. 2 stars they have with Bourousis and Spanoulis and their role players seem to all be performing. Perhaps they are just hot and cannot keep it up. But look at Turkey as well they are a team of one star (Hedo) and lots of role players and their role players are coming through much stronger than Spain's role players are.

Teams like Serbia and Croatia do not even have a star on their teams, they have the closest things guys like Vujcic, Ukic, Planinic, Tepic, Teodosic, Krstic, Velickovic and such type of players. But really there are no stars there (not saying some of those young players cannot be in the future) though. So for them you see a whole team of role players but yet they play well many of them and they get a good contribution from a large section of the team.

Again, this is not happening with Spain so far. All I am saying is that just Pau and then help from his brother, Fernandez, Reyes, and Navarro is probably not enough to win a EuroBasket. That's just not enough depth of players that are contributing if you run into another good team that rolls out 9-10 players all helping their team. Spain almost looks like to be honest that it reminds me a bit of like the 2004 Team USA.
 
Imo, It will be Spain vs Greece final and spain will win over greece. If Turkey gets a medal of this tournement, it will really be a big win for us. Nevertheless, even they don't make it to top3, as long as they keep playing this way and with this passion, I will be still proud of my NT. They are doing way better than i expected. It wasn't our roster what made me get low expectations , it was our coach but he is doing well so far :)

1- Spain
2- Greece
3- Turkey/Serbia/France/Germany(snap)
 
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