Euroleague 2012-13 Ranking (Group Phase)

Before the Top 16 phase, let's analyze which team is the best and which one is the worst. This analyze based on team's offensive and defensive performance. It also includes team's distribution curve of winning percentage at their 10 games. Every entry is examimed by their position according to Euroleague origin on the corresponding entry. It's not only how they played against their opponents , also about how they stop their opponents. Basicly, the best team which established their game against any opponent and prevent their opponents to show a good performance against them will take the number one spot. By the way,strength of schedule for every group is also taken into consideration.

Numbers above, show the positions of team's performance stats. X coordinates stand for team's own performance and Y coordinates stand for how they handle their opponents. And finally RP is the rating point which will decide team's destiny.OK, yeah not the destiny maybe, but it will be decide their rankings. Ranking table will be formed like;

Here are the rankings. Barcelona is the best team in the group phase as expected, and their local rival Real Madrid is the runner up. Other group leaders Maccabi and Zalgiris are right behind them. There are some interesting scoops too. For example, Partizan was better than some Top 16 teams. And also, Caja Laboral which clinched  to Top 16 in the last day of the group phase, is one of the worst teams so far.  

Best of the Worst 8

Group phase -or should we say training phase- of the Euroleague 2012-13 Season has completed. 16 team will continue to their march while 8 team are returning their homelands. Their fans are probably  unsatisfied and most of them claims their team was better than others. Now let's analyze the unhappy 8 teams first before the Top 16 phase, because we will have enough time to analyze happy ones.

First of all this is not Euroleague team power rankings. This team index formed by analyzing how the team's showed their performance against their opponents and how they stopped their opponents for every group game they played. Every statistic -whether about team's own performance or about how they handle their opponents - is awarded or penalized regarding their opponents normal Euroleague performance. So, if two team produced even identical statistics, the one with the tougher opponent would forge ahead.

Number 8

Cedevita Zagreb is the one who showed worst performance considering their opponent's performance. Probably, the fact that one of their opponents are one of the worst team in this list, played a great part in their place. They were way behind in the Top 16 race.

Number 7

Disappoinment. It's the only word when think about Milano. They have just an amazing roster. Nobody seems to understand what is their problem and it's another subject for a detailed analyze. However, they deserved the worst second team title considering their performance. If I had to cross check every team in the list with their roster quality, they would be clearly the worst team.

Number 6

First of all, they have the best team logo in Euroleague. They showed some fragments of solid performances , however they advanced here from Eurochallenge, let's give them a break.


Number 5

After a huge disappointment at last year, they were finaly in the group phase this year. Yet, they weren't very impressive this year too,unfortunately. Group D was probably the easiest group to advance. There were two team who will beat all the other teams in the group and the other four teams were about the same potential. They blowed their chance, and now they are in the middle of the unhapy list.

Number 4

It wasn't the best year for Polish champion, they were at the last place in Group B. They weren't too bad and also some of their youngsters showed great performances. Most importantly, Ponitka never let me down in fantasy league.

Number 3

It's too hurtful that we will not see Trinchieri in Top 16. They don't have the greatest roster but Trinchieri somehow made them roll anyway. Unfortunate for them, they were at probably the most challenging group at all.

Number 2

Partizan... They were just amazing. If you look at the standings, yeah they may look like the worst team in the group. But, they were great for god's sake. They were the only team which show real resistence to big two(Barcelona&CSKA). It's shame that they won't be with us in next phases. Such a shame...

Number 1 

And the winner. Most likely, they have one of the most inexpensive roster. Yet, they proved that thet were quite capable of playing great basketball. They polished some of their players and I believe if they weren't in the Group A, they have a great chance to march on to Top 16. Even though they won't be able to play in the Top 16 phase, their fans would be delighted with their teams I guess.

Plaza On Business

This year Zalgiris is charming everyone with their offensive smoothness.  How long that will last? To F4? That is the question in everbody’s mind.  Let’s put aside that question for awhile and look to the major coaches’ teams offensive performances in euroleague for last 3 years. The F-Shoot will give us a clue about teams, which are seperated to the coaches, offensive fluency and shoot selections. 

(F-shoot contains FGA,FTA,PTS and some coeffients for euroleague. The F-shoots calculated for every year seperately and  to increase the importance of the close years.They adjusted with coefficients.) 

We can see the greatness of Plaza’s offense from the chart.  In the same way,this year’s Barca’s, CSKA’s, Maccabi’s level of offensive fluency  is impressive. Still none of them get closer to Kazlauskas’ CSKA’s offense. 20 – 3 record. 3 loss. Thankfully or Unfortunately you choose, one of them and the last of them was  the Final Game.

Kart Out. 

Concernin' Fenerbahce Ulker's Rebound Problem

One of the most popular topics in Euroleague chit chats; Fenerbahce has a major rebounding problem. It's clear that they have the worst rebound numbers in the league.(29,3 Av. - 24th). Also, they give 12,1 offensive rebound per game which is the 3rd highest number in the league. So, we can safely presume that their biggest flaw in the defense is rebounds. Or can we ? I'll  make a direct quote from Grima Wormtongue to answer this question ; "That is a lie". OK, lie is a little bit harsh , it's more misunderstanding than lie.

I'm not an idiot-I think- and I'm aware of that Fenerbahce isn't good at rebounding,not only that they are  the worst team in the Euroleague in term of rebounds. However, it's not their problem in the defensive side of the game. I should define the word "problem" first. If something doesn't progress as you expected, then you have a problem. But, Fenerbahce's being the one of the worst team in rebound numbers is -should be - expected. It's not about players, it's about defensive system that Pianigiani prefers. Being weak on the board one of the outputs of the system. It's the worst output,but still it is not an unexpected result. It was always like this in Pianigiani's teams. Let's look at some of the previous Mens Sana Siena teams' rebounding numbers.

Graphs above represent the offensive rebounds teams allowed per opponent's 100 possession. It's obvious that Siena has never had good  rebound numbers in last 3 year. If we want to analyze Fenerbahce for same statistics ;

Nothing has changed in rebound numbers. Yet,something is still wrong,because, Pianigiani's Siena teams were never bad defensive teams.Yet, Fenerbahce seems pretty unsatisfying in the defensive end. Then, a new question is rising; What's the problem ???

First, we need to understand the Pianigiani's defensive style. Pianigiani is very fond of putting pressure on the ball on the backcourt. He wants his players to be aggressive while defending and watch for every opportunity to steal the ball. That puts so much pressure on opponents' guards and makes it so much harder for opponents to set up the game. This pressure forces opponents to turnovers and increase the steal number in his teams. The negative side of that mentality is rebounds. It's almost impossible to outrun other teams in rebound numbers with this defensive approach,yet it will be an acceptable lost if you force your opponents to several number of turnovers. Now, let's get back to the original question; "What's the problem?". The problem is , even though Fenerbahce tries to play same defensive mentality as previous Siena teams, they couldn't be as aggresive as they should be so far. They couldn't force the opponent's to turnovers as Siena. They suffered the rebounding problems as expected but they couldn't reap the benefit of their defensive mentality. An analyze for steal and forced turnover numbers are shown below.

As I mentioned before, poor rebound numbers are expected output of Simone Pianigiani's defensive mentality, but  great steal numbers and forced turnover numbers are too. These numbers also trigger the transition offenses which increases the teams efficiency. All these analyzes show that, lack of aggresiveness and weak pressure on the ball is the Fenerbahce's main problem in the defense. Slim rebound numbers are just collateral damage.


Note: This analyze only includes outputs of the Pianigiani's defensive mentality. Fenerbahce has some other defensive problems too,such as defending P&R offenses or lack of strenght on the frontcourt. Yet,they have nothing to do with defensive mentality, it's all about roster. Maybe there will be another analyzes concerning these problems but not this one.

Mahmuti's Lineup Trouble

Black clouds are appearing for Anadolu Efes again in top 16. Real, CSKA, Zalgiris, Pana, Efes and Malaga 6 teams 4 spot. Can Efes get any spot? The hope is melting every day like Jordan Farmar. If the standings are determined by financial powers, what will Efes’s rank? 3? yes 3. Again same destiny (!) that is not changing over and over the years.

This year one of Efes’s problems is lineup problem. Still no one knows what is Efes’s starting lineup or -more important- finishing lineup even Oktay Mahmuti.  It can be seen even with a quick overview.

There are some conflicts in Efes rotation that effect to compose a regular lineup. Only Semih Erden’s spot is fixed. Special thanks to Stanko and Estaban!

•        Farmar issue!
•       Savanovic or Kerem Gönlüm?
•       There is no spot for Dogus Balbay?
•       What happened to Kerem Tunceri in summer?
•       There was no small forward until the arrival of Joshua Shipp.

When you look at the all Efes lineups you directly see Jamon Lucas is most successful player(acc. +/- Per Poss. from gigabasket.com). He is in the 7 of 9 lineups which is positive in acc. +/- Per Poss.  Efes is more succeeding with him.

When looking at the first round games, the most used 5 is Farmar – Lucas Gordon – Sinan Güler – Dusko Savanovic – Semih Erden. They played 40 minutes in total. 35 of them in games won which are game 2, 3 and 4. And then what? After those games these 5 players played only 5 minutes. That is interesting.

Again games won 2, 3, 4 and 8 Farmar – Kerem x 2 – Sasha – Semih played together 14 minutes. But they played 5 minutes in the other games.  Absolutely, Kerem Tunceri’s injury effect that lineups minutes but also that is one of succeeding lineup deserve more minutes in top 16.

There is an interesting situation in Dogus Balbay’s status in team. Dogus was like a strawberry in a bunch of crap in summer in Eurobasket Qualification with Turkish National Team.  He played 1 game against Milano and waved towels until 9. Game.

Aaand  the most shocking detail is coming. There is not any lineup which played all 10 games. Not a single 5. It is the signal of something I guess.

Oktay Mahmuti is one of my favorite coach in the world but that team is not his team. But also he knew that when he signed the contract in summer. He should figure out something until December 28 because there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

Kart Out.

All About Us

Let us introduce ourselves. We are two engineer, two basketball lover,  two men who believe every move in the court reflects something can be analyzed to the stat sheet. We are here to analyze NBA and mostly Euroleague with extraordinary and unseen stats. Our main mission is to create new style formulas to understand the court and analyze the results. You cannot reach most of the our formulas since we are the  ones who created them. Please remember, every formula we come up with is results of endless studies and hours of labor. None of them based on personal opinion,they are all about numbers. We believe in numbers and positive sciences. After all , we are engineers. Let Max Cohen to explain our perspective.