mojo13 wrote:Yo Ucanwill and Mirotic...what's your opinion on the quality of the BCL versus EuroCup at this point. My understanding is a couple years ago the EuroCup was considered a meaningful notch above the BCL, but there have been some defections of clubs over the last couple years.
I know it varies drastically from club to club....but as a whole are they considered at parity at this point? How would you best judge it? Average budgets of clubs? Average placement in their respective domestic leagues?
Hair Canada wrote:For me the two are pretty much on par now and maybe I'd even give the edge to the BCL. If we're looking at leading leagues, for example, Tenerife and Burgos (the BCL champions) are two of the best in the Spanish league, and both are in the BCL. Same for the Italian league, with Brindisi and Sassari. AEK is (and I think has been for years) clearly the third-best team in Greece (beyond the two that play in the Euroleague). Same for Jerusalem. They are very clearly the second-best (and second in terms of budget) team in Israel and have been for the last two decades, with some Euroleague aspirations. They were arguably a top-8 team in the EuroCup, and then they moved to the BCL. All in all, as I said, I would give a slight edge to the BCL.
The two leagues are about equal.
As far as the teams above from Spain and Italy, they are pretty much in the second tier of teams from those leagues. Among the best is a bit misleading, because they are far off from what the big EuroLeague clubs are. But those two Spanish clubs are indeed good teams.
In the case of Hapoel Jerusalem, they have cut their budget a lot recently. In theory that should be a EuroLeague club, but they won't spend enough money.
AEK is along with Panathinaikos, the 2nd or 3rd biggest and most important Greek club, and arguably should be 2nd considering that their football club is a clear second in Greece. They also just got a new arena that they own themselves. But they have a weird owner that refuses to play in EuroLeague.
Then there is Promitheas that plays in EuroCup. It's kind of the opposite. They don't have a very big market or fan base, but they have a rich owner that will spend anything needed. They have NBA level training and practice facilities, youth academies that are at the level of the biggest EuroLeague clubs, and are said to be building a new 10,000 arena. The owner claims they will be in EuroLeague soon. So I guess you could argue any of Panathinaikos, AEK, or Promitheas as the 2nd/3rd Greek club, if you take out the obvious difference that Panathinaikos plays in EuroLeague.
That's kind of an example of the two leagues in general. About the same overall, with bigger and more important teams maybe sometimes going to BCL for the reasons of trying to money grab with FIBA, in hopes FIBA wins the "war" and they come out with money from it. While the EuroCup has teams that are more ambitious.
You could compare Virtus Bologna (EuroCup) and AEK (BCL) that way. Two historic and important clubs, that used to be very relevant EuroLeague teams. Virtus Bologna is more ambitious because they chose EuroCup, so they could get to EuroLeague. Same like Promitheas. AEK is less ambitious, because they chose BCL for money reasons.
So AEK is like Hapoel Jerusalem, only with a bigger budget. Again in theory, AEK should be getting the EuroLeague contract instead of Bologna. They have a bigger market, a better arena, a bigger fan base (they were averaging 12,000 attendance in meaningful games, and getting around 18,000 in the biggest games), similarly rich ownership, and they even seem to attract bigger name players in general, but they choose BCL because of money. So they stay in BCL, and now Bologna is going to EuroLeague.
Galatasaray is another example similar to AEK. These are very big clubs in European sports (with huge football followings), yet they are playing the games of the FIBA dispute for brownie points, rather than just trying to get into EuroLeague. While the EuroCup clubs like say UNICS or Lokomotiv are much smaller and less important clubs, but they do everything they can to try to get into EuroLeague.
So the overall quality of the league is about the same, but clearly the EuroCup teams have more ambitious owners, while the BCL clubs are just trying to get FIBA money. If you prefer to see some of the more important clubs historically, that have more importance in European basketball history, and that have bigger brands, fan bases, etc., then BCL would be more appealing to you probably.
If you are interested in seeing clubs that might be in EuroLeague, even if they don't have good budgets (Budocnost type clubs), then you might be more interested in EuroCup. Personally, I prefer the BCL for viewing, just because it has more brand name clubs in it. You can just look at some of the arena sizes of BCL and see how much more fans some of those clubs have than typical EuroCup teams. But the competition level of players and coaches is about the same in both leagues.
I should point out that for both leagues being about equal in quality, while they are quite lower of a level than the EuroLeague, they are both better than any national domestic league in Europe, and any other league in the world, besides the NBA. You have so much bragging about the level of the Spanish ACB in US sports media, like at every NBA draft especially, but both the EuroCup and BCL are better than the Spanish league. The domestic leagues, no matter what big EuroLeague teams they might have, can't compete with the overall depth and quality of EuroCup and BCL.
Basically, worldwide:
1. NBA
2. EuroLeague
3. EuroCup / BCL
Whether players are in the BCL or EuroCup, it's basically the third best club competition level in the world.
Or maybe I am wrong, as I said I became for more casual over the years, 15 years ago I used to know all Euroleague and Eurocup rosters, but nowadays I just mostly aware of Euroleague and few other teams and thats about it.