The European Leagues

[Gek]

With news of players starting to bolt (or threatening), I'm wondering how good the Euro leagues are? I remember hearing Joe Crispin (a former Penn State player from when they were actually a good team a few years back) talk about how when he played in Greece, there would be riots in the stands and some of his money he got would have blood stains on it. I don't know what team and obviously was not making 7 million a year from Olympiakos, but still.

I also understand the market now blows, but the euro is starting to become over inflated like the dollar, if they really wanted to make money (investment wise) Asia is the place to play. It's frustrating to me, now I don't see a guy like Lebron or anyone bolting for overseas anytime soon, but if they're willing to give Brian Cardinal contracts to every guy in the league, we're going to lose a lot of players.

[Rasho Brezec]

Yes, the leagues are getting better and better every day. The top three leagues right now would be Spain, Russia, and Greece, but it is really hard to tell which one is better, since you hear about new players coming in every day. I think the Russian league will be the most competitive in the next season, cause there is only one spot in the Euroleague for Russian clubs. And we can all see in what kind of bidding wars the owners are right now.

The quality of Italian league has dropped in the last few years, when Kinder Bologna IIRC bankrupted, but a new club was formed and is slowly coming back. However, they too managed to get some players from NBA back (Brezec to Roma), and there are rumours that Virtus is interested in Jason Williams.

The next strong league would be Adriatic League, which is formed of clubs from former Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro). Here you can find a lot of up and coming prospects, who are interesting mostly for top Spanish and Greek clubs. Their clubs can't pay them as much as Spanish or Greek are offering (Olimpija or Partizan's budget are approx 4 million €, which is 2 million € less than what Nachbar will get next season, for example), so they buy them and loan them for a season or two to develop, and bring them back when they feel they are ready.

I hope I gave you some useful info on what the situation here is, if there is anything else you want to know, feel free to ask.

[laduane1]

I only see the euro teams when they play in the olympics or a few seconds on a sports show. It seems the NBA has drafted a ton of players to the NBA and I guess it is starting to swing the other way around. But the true players want to be in the big show. The NBA.

[Gek]

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Wow, thank you. That's very helpful. A few of the players you hear about that are thinking about going overseas now (nachbar, biendrins, even vujacic) are from those leagues to begin with, so it's not too surprising to see them go back, but the size of the contracts they're getting ($10 mill per for Biedrins?) is crazy.

[Rasho Brezec]

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Wow, thank you. That's very helpful. A few of the players you hear about that are thinking about going overseas now (nachbar, biendrins, even vujacic) are from those leagues to begin with, so it's not too surprising to see them go back, but the size of the contracts they're getting ($10 mill per for Biedrins?) is crazy.

For NBA standard, yes, it is crazy, but you have to pay these guys a bit more to convince them to leave the NBA. NBA is still considered the premier league, but I could see European leagues come very close in terms of talent, especially if more and more players continue to come over here (they would be basically playing against each other, so the competition level wouldn't change a lot for them).

[Sedale Threatt]

The Adriatic League...sounds dope.