(low) euroleague level

[bukovski]

So, the first round of EL is already gone...My first impression is that the level of this year's cometition is dissapointing...Compared to previous years there is a small group of teams that can play at high level,such as PAO (worse than last year) ,CSKA, Olympiakos,TAU,Barca...Italian teams are dead, Maccabi and Malaga much worse than expected...The rest don't worth any comment,nothing special...The main reason for this is probably the loss of significant number of european playerw to the NBA ( Bargnani,Garbajoza, Parker, Spanoulis, Gelabale, Jasikevicius, Calderon, Baston...) As a result, european bball becomes poorer every year...
Anyway, what do you think? Are you satisfied with this year's EL?

[Juan Carlos Nadal]

I was thinking about that in fact and I agree. Most EL teams look much weaker than last year e.g. Malaga, Maccabi, Climamio, Ulker, Olimpija, Zalgiris, Efes, Benetton and maybe PAO.

We also have loads of new weak sides such as Napoli, Aris, Koln, Le Mans and in addition to those some well known relatively weak sides such as Prokom, Orthez, (have they improved or is the deteriorated level of the other teams that make them look good?) Partizan, Roma, etc.

The level has definately decreased IMO.

[qiangdade]

I was thinking about that so i made i comparison:

Cska: as strong as last year
Tau: stronger than last year
Barcelona: stronger than last year
Pao: stronger
Oly: stronger
Maccabi: definatelly weaker
Malaga: probably weaker though they didn't manage anything in the top16 last year so let's wait and see
joventut:equal to last year's real
Aris: way stronger than last year's aek
Partizan:stronger
Cibona: equal
Olimpija: way weaker
Zalgiris: equal
Dynamo: equally strong as rytas
cologne: same as bamberg
le mans: stronger than strassbourg
Orthez: better than last year
Benetton: way weaker
napoli: same shit as armani milano
prokom: stronger
efes: same as last year
fener-ulker: the same
climamio: way weaker
roma: same as siena

What i have noticed is that the group of strong teams (tau, pao, oly, barca, cska) has become way to strong for the competition. I would be surprised to see a team other than 4 of those in the f4. That is why they fight over the margin so hard, as we saw yesterday( tau-oly). They need to top the group in order to have the best chances for the home court advantage in the playoffs, cause they all know that one of them is gonna be left out.

The middle class teams have also become stronger imo than last year, getting closer to relativelly strong teams like efes. The level of the weaker teams has dropped alot though. Some of the weak are not even uleb cup level maybe. Personally i believe (and i have stated that before) that the contracts are to blame 100%, but anyway....

Generally i see a clear 3-gear euroleague this year, with extremelly strong teams( stronger than last year) competing for the f4, with a group of equal middle class teams and a group of very weak teams. Last year these classifications were not that clear.

I will not repeat myself stating all the things that have to change in order to have a stronger euroleague, but getting rid of the contracts and openning the doors to more russian teams would be a start. Still i don't believe that this year's euroleague is weaker than last year's. It is just different.

As for the players: yeah we lost alot of players to the nba but we also gained some very good ones: Planinic, Acker, Macijauskas, we(europe) managed to keep some superstars: scola, splitter and also new talent is emerging

Sorry for the huge post

[a.i.]

I agree with qiangdade. The difference between Euroleague's best teams and all the others is bigger now than last year.

Imo there are two reasons why the league looks worse:

1.Maccabi and Efes are much worse than last year (i hope they'll improve)
2.Teams from Italy (apart from Benetton) are just awful...

Still, there are not many teams in the Uleb Cup which would make the Euroleague better. Only Real Madrid comes to my mind, but then one of the four good teams from Spain wouldn't be there.

[qiangdade]

Still, there are not many teams in the Uleb Cup which would make the Euroleague better.

Unics Kazan is euroleague level imo. Also Siena is probably better and more consistent than let's say napoli or climamio. Maybe even Zvezda is better than the 2 italian teams. I fear that the uleb cup is gonna end up as a competition for the russian teams to win in order to have a second team in the euroleague( or third if euroleague indeed expands to 32 teams)

[Buducnost PG]

Unics Kazan is euroleague level imo. Also Siena is probably better and more consistent than let's say napoli or climamio. Maybe even Zvezda is better than the 2 italian teams. I fear that the uleb cup is gonna end up as a competition for the russian teams to win in order to have a second team in the euroleague( or third if euroleague indeed expands to 32 teams)

Agree. Unics is great team imo. Good players, good coaching and money to stay competetiv for years. Russia definetly deserv more then one place in the EL.

[cendor]

I'll agree that the level of this year's Euroleague is overall lower. Some clubs are weaker this year, but I would not say that about Panathinaikos.

[Calvin]

I don't think is fair to judge maccabi. They're without the second best or best player Burstein. In some ways they're better. Eliyahu is a better dunker and rebounder than Baston. I didn't say Eliyahu is a better player. Halperin is a better playmaker than Will Solomon. Maccabi still has Vucijic and Burstein. Sure Parker is gone and he's a better scoring guard than Byrum. Parker did disappear in big games. Maccabi starting five are all still individual offensive dangers to opposing teams. Due to mediocre performance maccabi shouldn't be the favorite to win the cup. They should win the cup since on paper they're the best team.

[Aegis]

It's only the beginning of the season.
As the ranking doesn't matter much for the big guns who are sure to make the top16, they don't need to go all out yet. The level will be much higher in the next round.

The italians sure are disappointing though.

[gravity]

This year's draw one of the reason. Remember last year, We have a "death" group with Maccabi,Efes,Rytas,Barca... This year we dont have same level group.

We dont have same level Maccabi and Efes too. And We lost italian teams. Compare, playing an away game with an Italian team today or 5-6 years ago?

And only a few teams still hold their stars. CSKA, TAU, Barcelona and PAO. We can add them Olympiakos too. But Efes, Maccabi, Italian and Spanish teams lost their "imporant" stars.

an example. Efes Pilsen. Henry Domercant, Ender Arslan, Marco Popovic, Kaya Peker and Antonio Granger (injured) You can build a team with those 5 players for F4.

[Nakz]

I insist in saying Efes is not weaker than last year They're just unlucky this year But things can change before the important games start.

But you're right, the overall level of the Euroleague has decreased this year. There are a lot of teams, which are not on Euroleague level.

[thatmadd]

Italian clubs have lower budgets than the strongest European teams. The current rules penalize Italian teams in Euroleague, as they're obliged to have at least six Italian players and this made Italians' salaries increase consistently. Furthermore, Italian clubs are forced to pay the highest taxes in the whole Continent. Therefore they can't compete with CSKA, Panathinaikos, Barcelona and all the other great Euroleague clubs when it's time to sign important and/or expensive foreign players, as they have to spend a consistent part of their own budgets on the Italians (almost all the Italian players of the Euroleague teams from Italy earn more than their US teammates). Do not forget that the larger number of US players (this year the teams can sign a maximum of 4 Americans) generally made the less rich teams a lot more competitive than it used to happen in the past, and this means that all games in Serie A are tough and hardly predictable and it's not surprising that the top 3 teams in the league don't play in Euroleague (Siena, Virtus Bologna and Milano). In my opinion the level of the Italian great clubs decreased, while less rich teams are way better and this makes Serie A a lot more balanced than ever. Therefore, playing both in Serie A and in Euroleague it's harder now and this creates further problems to the Italian clubs involved in both competitions.

[achinet]

And only a few teams still hold their stars. CSKA, TAU, Barcelona and PAO. We can add them Olympiakos too. But Efes, Maccabi, Italian and Spanish teams lost their "imporant" stars.

It's not truth that the Spanish teams has gotten worse because that they lost his stars, in fact, so far is the year with better results for the Spanish clubs in European competitions

[Czarkazem13]

I don't think is fair to judge maccabi. They're without the second best or best player Burstein. In some ways they're better. Eliyahu is a better dunker and rebounder than Baston. I didn't say Eliyahu is a better player. Halperin is a better playmaker than Will Solomon. Maccabi still has Vucijic and Burstein. Sure Parker is gone and he's a better scoring guard than Byrum. Parker did disappear in big games. Maccabi starting five are all still individual offensive dangers to opposing teams. Due to mediocre performance maccabi shouldn't be the favorite to win the cup. They should win the cup since on paper they're the best team.

I would have to disagree. Baston IMHO is a better rebounder and dunker (not a major aspect) then Eliyahu. Plus, he is a better defender. With that said, Lior has much potential considering his age.

Maccabi isn't the only team that lost players, so the excuses for Maccabi can be made for some other teams.

Yotam is a better playmaker then Will, yes. But scoring and defense goes to Solomon. Plus, the other players had experience over the young Israelis.

And I wanna make sure I get this right, you stated that Maccabi is the best team "on paper?"

Vujcic is still the man, though.

[T.W.Is.M.]

The current rules penalize Italian teams in Euroleague, as they're obliged to have at least six Italian players and this made Italians' salaries increase consistently.

Greek league rules also oblige the teams to have 6 greek players but the level of the greek teams is not decreasing.However, what u say is logical and we have also faced this problem with the increasing wages a few years ago.The result was that top greek players(Papaloukas, Kakiouzis, Papadopoulos, Fotsis, Zisis) left Greece and played(and some still play) abroad.
Generally speaking, I don't think the euroleague overall level is lower, I think the top teams have increased their difference from the rest and that gives many people the wrong impression about the league level.