Post#647 » by Mirotic12 » Fri Feb 10, 2017 10:28 pm
Let's look at these NBA - EuroLeague games. I went back and used the Lakers versus Barca game from 2010 as the starting point. Because that was when they gave a lot of attention to that game, being NBA champions versus EuroLeague champions.....
Both teams played hard and payed to win the game, no matter what any NBA only fan claims. The reports said Phil Jackson was furious in the locker room after the game and was yelling and throwing things because the Lakers lost. Kobe said after the game that the Lakers absolutely tried to win the game. So I am using that as a starting point, since it's sort of the beginning point in time where these games really started becoming very competitive.
So, in the last 6 years, and over a 27 game sample size (which is not small), the NBA has a record of 17-10 against the EuroLeague in these games. Some key points,
1. These games are played under pure 100% NBA rules.
2. These games have either 3 NBA refs, or 2 NBA refs and 1 FIBA Europe ref.
3. At home, NBA teams are 12-3, but on the road, they are 5-7.
So, 15 of those 27 games have been played at home by the NBA teams, a very clear advantage. 27 of those 27 games have been played with majority or all NBA refs (who do call the game differently than European refs), and with pure NBA rules - another very clear advantage for NBA teams.
So giving NBA teams all the advantages you can, they are a mind boggling 17-10 overall, and 5-7 on the road, and even somehow managed to lose 3 home games....
Now for the excuses some NBA only fans make for this....
"The NBA teams are not even trying, and the EuroLeague teams are playing the single biggest game of their lives, and it's their world championship".
FALSE - the NBA teams are clearly trying to win these games (Doc Rivers said the Celtics got a nasty note from the NBA commissioner after they lost to Fenerbahce, and it told them to make sure they didn't lose anymore to EuroLeague teams), you can clearly see the NBA players don't want to "get embarrassed" by losing to a EuroLeague team. They are out there playing very hard in those games.
The EuroLeague teams are also in preseason exhibition games, and they are not playing the biggest game of their lives, and it's no championship for them. That's ridiculous. They play hard, and they play to win the game, and they want to beat an NBA team, but they have hundreds of more important games in their careers.
"The NBA teams play their bench and 3rd string the whole game, and rest their starters, while the EuroLeague teams play their starters and best players the whole game."
FALSE - In just about every single one of these games, the NBA teams actually use their bench less minutes than the EuroLeague teams do, and the EuroLeague teams go just as deep on their roster or deeper in the game. Not to mention that the EuroLeague team's best players will often sit out the game, or only play 18-25 minutes of a 48 minute game. It's simply a myth that NBA teams are playing 48 minutes with 3rd string, and EuroLeague teams are playing all their best players 40 minutes. It's completely untrue and has zero basis in reality, since anyone can look up the box scores of these games and see it's simply untrue. Where the 4-5 best players of the NBA teams actually usually tend to get more minutes than the 4-5 best players in the EuroLeague teams in such games.
We have some claims that any good NCAA DI team can beat the best EuroLeague teams, that someone like Fultz would clearly by far and away be the best player in EuroLeague, that the best NCAA teams are bigger, longer, more athletic, play faster than the best EuroLeague teams, etc.
So using this same logic, that must mean that playing under NBA rules, not NCAA rules, that playing 15 out of 27 games on NBA team's home arenas, playing with NBA refs (that also do ref differently than NCAA refs)....that somehow NCAA teams should manage to win more than 10 out of 27 games, like EuroLeague teams did.
And keep this in mind, not the "elite college teams". Nope. Just let's say a random selection of the top 25 NCAA teams. Because the EuroLeague's elite teams are not usually playing in these games. You do have teams like CSKA, Real playing often in recent years. But at times Real wasn't a good team. Barca was for a long time, but this year they played against the Thunder, and they are a bad team now. Plus, half their team was injured for that game - they still lost by just 4 points, with NBA rules and refs. I'd like to see some random top 12-15 NCAA team do that.
NBA is often playing Fener when they were mediocre, or Milano (very mediocre usually), or Maccabi (often average of worse), and not simply playing the top level EuroLeague teams all the time in these games.
If anyone here actually thinks every year you could randomly select 3-4 top 25 NCAA teams, put them in games against NBA teams, with NBA rules and refs, and play most of those games at NBA arenas...that those NCAA teams could win more than 10 of 27 games against the NBA teams - if anyone here really thinks and believes that, then they I cannot honestly believe they have ever seen an NCAA game, or ever seen an NBA game, or maybe both.
I have serious doubts that the NCAA teams could even win 1 game out of 100 against NBA teams, let alone that they could win 37 out of 100 games against NBA teams. Take the EuroLeague's percentage in those last 27 NBA against EuroLeague games, and you get a percentage that would equal 63 wins NBA, and 37 wins EuroLeague, for a 100 game sample size. And it would break down as 56 games at home for NBA, 44 games at home for EuroLeague (big NBA advantage), and 100 out of 100 games played under NBA rules, with NBA refs (an obvious advantage for NBA).
So seriously...people here think that good NCAA teams and the best NCAA players are better than EuroLeague teams and players?