Sports World
10-16-2007, 07:04 PM
- Euroleague Basketball, back and stronger than ever -
The new Euroleague season starts on October 22nd 2007 with the Final Four taking place in Madrid (Spain) on May 02-04. 2008. For the first time in European basketball history, several teams were able to offer to players $8-figure contracts making the Euroleague basketball a step-closer to the NBA level.
The Euroleague is contested in four phases. In the first phase (Regular season) 24 teams are divided into three groups of eight. At the end of the regular season 16 teams (first 5 teams from each group and the best 6th team from all groups) progress into the second phase where four groups are contested in a double round-robin format.
The third phase (Quarterfinals) is the knockout round where best 2 teams from each group (first-placed team of one group against second-placed team of other group) square against each other. The Final Four 2008 in Madrid will feature the winners of the quarterfinals series.
GROUP A (CSKA Moscow, TAU Cerámica, Olympiacos, Prokom Trefl Sopot, Olimpija Ljubljana, Žalgiris Kaunas, Montepaschi Siena, La Fortezza Bologna):
The group includes 3 strong pretenders for the Final Four (CSKA, TAU, Olympiacos), also 2 favorites for the Euroleague title (CSKA, Olympiacos). The Italian clubs Montepaschi (Italian champion) and La Fortezza Bologna may not have the same ambitions but are favorites to clinch the remaining 2 spots in the group that lead to the next round.
CSKA MOSCOW, current Russian Superleague Champion, with one of the highest budgets in Europe is targeting the same goal they had for the past several years, to win the Euroleague. In 2002 CSKA signed Dusan Ivkovic, the coach with plenty of national team and club titles, hoping for CSKA to win its first Euroleague title.
Ivkovic stayed with the club until 2005 with no luck of reaching that goal. His successor Ettore Messina joined the club in 2006 and won the Euroleague in his first season. Last season CSKA lost to Panathanaikos in the Athens final by a close margin. Anything other than reaching the Final Four in Madrid would be a failure for CSKA's Euroleague 2007/08 season.
Major players to leave the club past summer include Tomas Van den Spiegel, the 214cm center who left for Prokom (Poland), Oscar Torres averaged 8.7 points/23 minutes per game, now signed with Fortitudo Bologna (Italy). David Vanterpool the 34 year old guard may or may not stay at CSKA, he missed most of the last season due to injury problems.
The new-comers are Ramunas Siskauskas (small forward/shooting guard), one of Panathinaikos' main players last season helping them to win the Euroleague and Greek domestic championship titles, Marcus Goree (power forward/center) last seasons' Benetton Treviso's main player, Nikos Zisis (point guard/shooting guard) also coming from Treviso where he averaged 11 points/33 minutes per game.
The team includes Papaloukas (point guard), Euroleague 2006/07 player of the year, Euroleague 2006/07 guard of the year, J.R.Holden (point guard), established Euroleague player, play-maker for the Russian national team, and other highly experienced Euroleague clubs. CSKA's team is well experiences, has been playing together for several years and has what it takes to win the Title.
Coach Ettore Messina is known for his team's strong performance in defensive playing. During Euroleague's regular season 2006/07 through the course of 14 games CSKA was the team with best defense allowing opponents to make 65 points per game.
Messina asks for the best performance from each player during entire 40mins of play regardless what the results is and what is the team CSKA plays against.
TAU CERAMICA as one of the big names in European basketball, representative of the Spanish ACB, is sure to offer quality, competitive games. This season TAU may not have the players of MVP award potential like Louis Scola was last season (signed for the NBA's Houston Rockets) but plenty of great team players capable of making it into the Euroleague's team of the week selection in any week. Rakocevic (point guard) is able of scoring 30 points in Euroleague games, Splitter (center) can dominate playing close to the basket.
The team includes established Euroleague and National team players such as Jasaitis (small forward), Prigioni, winner of the Olympic gold medal in 2004 with Argentina. Adding players like Singleton (power forward) who had experience of playing in the NBA, the Italian League 2005 All-star game MVP, Planinic, McDonald, TAU will perform one of the strongest team plays in Euroleague, the thing needed to beat any team in decisive games.
OLYMPIACOS was one of the strong favorites to lift the trophy last seasons mainly due the fact that the Final Four was held on their home ground in Athens, Pinhas Gershon (won consecutive Euroleague titles while with Maccabi) was assigned for the coach and Macijauskas (guard) was brought from the NBA to be the team's key-player. Maciauskas missed the seasons due to injury problems and, in all, Olympiacos did not seem to have had the team needed to win the title.
All that changed this season, only ambitions stayed the same. Macijauskas is in the full swing and Olympiacos formed a powerful team with one of the biggest budgets in Europe, multi-million dollar contracts were signed with Tsakalidis (center) a new-comer from the NBA's Houston Rockets, Lynn Greer (guard) from Milwaukee and Marc Jackson (forward/center) 2000/01 NBA All-rookie team member while playing for the Golden State with 8 per points 4 rebounds per game during seven NBA seasons. MONTEPASCHI's notable players make Kaukenas (shooting guard) and Lavrinovic (center), both of them spent most of their Euro-games minutes playing in the ULEB cup and may not be the driving force needed to win games against top Euroleague teams.
Most of the time they will be double by opponents team defense and there's not enough support in other Montepaschi's players. Strong defensive teams like CSKA may allow Montepashi to score no more than 65 points just by playing good defense on those two players.
LA FORTEZZA BOLOGNA, through history the giant of European basketball winning the Euroleague titles in 1997 and 2001, is still recovering from the recent years downfall that saw them competing in the Italian second league. Bologna is expected to have a solid season, make it to the Euroleague next year through Italian championship and be among Euroleague title contenders in the upcoming seasons.
Bologna's top players like Ciacig (center) and Garri (center) have been around for some time, they can make solid performances, good enough to beat teams of similar quality such as Montepaschi or Prokom, it needs stellar performance and an additional extra player on the squad that Bologna happens not to have at the moment to beat teams such as TAU or Olympiacos. 5 American players on the team are without notable NBA stats, mostly playing in the D-league.
This leaves PROKOM and ZALGIRIS competing with the Italian teams for the 4th and 5th place that lead to the next round. Polish basketball clubs did not have big Euro results in recent years, Prokom's participation as a Euroleague team for consecutive years is a success for itself. During that time, Prokom twice made it into the Top 16, the success they will look to equal this season.
Current roster includes Travis Best (point guard), averaged 7.6 points and 3.5 assists per game in the NBA teams, Wolkowkyski (power forward/center), winner of the gold medal at Olympics 2004 with Argentina, also the former NBA players (a year with Seattle and Boston), and the biggest summer signing, Milan Gurovic (small forward), top scorer of the ULEB cup 2006/07.
ZALGIRIS is Euroleague title winner in 1999 living on its old glory at the moment, core of the team is made of domestic players, along with this summer's biggest signing DeMarcus Brown, the 33 year old player with limited playing experience in the NBA and highly experienced in the Euroleague playing for top teams for over 7 seasons. Last season Zalgiris finished the regular season with 2-12 record, this season they hope to do better as more experienced team.
Olimpija does not offer the quality needed throughout 14 games of the regular season to reach the next round. Olimpija saw some of its best players leaving the club last season, the crowd at Olimpija's home-ground Tivoli knows to be rather silent, there may not be too many spectators attending the games if bigger Euroleague teams are not to guest. The city of Ljubljana does seem to be too enthusiastic about its basketball club opposite to many other Euroleague hosting cities. Olimpija seems to be the weakest team in the group.
Group B (Unicaja Málaga, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Efes Pilsen, Aris Thessaloniki, Cibona Zagreb, Le Mans, Lietuvos Rytas Vilnius, Armani Jeans Milano):
The only group not to feature a team favorite for winning the Euroleague title. This makes the group be without great gap in quality between the teams. Unicaja as the representative of Spanish ACB, Maccabi with huge results over the last several years are expected to be among top 5 in the group of 8. All other teams would consider it having a successful Euroleague season to reach the second round.
UNICAJA is one of the 4 representatives of Europe's best national league, Spanish ACB. Unicaja took everyone by surprised to reach the Final Four last season. The team kept most of its players, Jiri Welsh (small forward) a 27-year old player with 6.7 point per game average during his NBA carrier, Jimenez (small forward) very experienced European player, winner of the World Championship 2006 gold medal with Spain, Haislip (center) the 13th pick of the NBA draft 2002.
Unicaja could easily 'sneak in' into the Final Four this years as well, they finished last seasons' first round with a modest 7-7 record and progressed to the quarter finals by being better placed than mid-sized Euroleague clubs Benneton and Aris, in the quarter finals Unicaja defeated Barcelona 2-1 overall with the 3rd game playing on home-court.
Unicaja players are mentally strong and able to keep concentration on needed level in the decisive moments of the game. Unicaja may also be the team who can be swept off by a large margin of 20-or-so points difference playing against top Euro clubs such as CSKA or Madrid, and easily lose away games at lower ranked good home-court clubs where passionate crowd boost home-teams performance as it is with Efes in Istanbul and Aris in Thessaloniki.
MACCABI had its recent glory days by winning consecutive titles in 2004 (defeated Skipper Bologna by a margin of 44 points in the final game) and 2005 (TAU Ceramica by 12 points) and losing in the finals 2006. Maccabi dynasty ended in the summer 2006 when Anthony Parker and Maceo Baston left the club to join the NBA's Toronto Raptors. Coach Pinhas Gershon also left the club.
Last year they had modest 8-6 result during regular season and were relegated in the quarter finals by CSKA, the series ended 2-1 for CSKA with CSKA winning two games by a margin of 22 and 21 points. Maccabi's club budget among the highest in Europe at the start of the 3rd millennium stagnated while in the last 2-3 years the budgets of several other European teams drastically heighten. Maccabi's team did not change significantly from the last season, all-around player Vujcic (center), Sharp (shooting guard) and Bynem (point guard) are core of the team.
Highly talented Eliyahu (power forward) is expected to be a major factor in the team's playing. New additions on the team include experienced European player David Bluthenthal (center), Marcus Fizer (forward) who signed a two-year ($900.000 per year) contract, Fizer was selected with the fourth pick of the 2000 NBA Draft by the Chicago Bulls.
Maccabi is covered on all positions, the crowd at Nokia Arena (one of the bigger venues in Euroleague) will be loud as always. Maccabi is not the title contender as it may take a season for the new-comers to adapt to the team. Reaching beyond quarter finals would be a major success for Maccabi.
Efes Pilsen has got the imperatives of reaching more than first round being probably the most popular basketball club in Turkey, country with 70 million citizens where basketball has its place. Coach David Blatt won European Championship 2007 with Russia and is considered one of the best, if not the best, coaches in Europe at the moment.
The team consists of all domestic players without big names plus 5 American players without notable NBA career. Efes Pilsen games will have publicity, the crowd will cheer them passionately, the team will hope to equal the last season’s success when they reached the second round with 8-6 record during regular season.
ARIS THESSALONIKI, as all basketball teams in Greece, lives in the shadows of PAO and Olympiacos. Aris' supporters make the club's games unique, together with Partizan crowd in Belgrade Aris is recognized to have the loudest crowd in Europe, their home-ground Alexandreio Melathron with 4,800 seats capacity is not too big but each spectator is actively involved in cheering for the team, no team regardless of its quality can claim secured win in Thessaloniki.
Domestic players with the team are not of the same glory as those playing in PAO and Olympiacos, American players did not have notable careers in the NBA, two other foreign acquisitions include Lithuanian Serapinas (small forward) and the biggest star on the team experienced Euroleague and former NBA player with limited playing experience Finn Mottola (center).
CIBONA ZAGREB, may be one of the teams with the least of ambitions, imperatives and means to reach the second round. There may not be too many spectators involved at the 5,400 capacity arena if the giants of European basketball do not guest in the City. Their best player Kus left the club past summer, no big names were added on the team that last year ended Euroleague season being placed 7th in the group of 8 teams. Cibona will be targeting the group's 5th or 6th place in order to reach the second round.
LE MANS is one of the 2 French teams in this year's Euroleague, country that did not see its club posting major results in Euroleague in recent years. Last season Le Mans finished as the 7th team in group and did not progress into the second round. There are no big names on the team. Le Mans, along with Cibona, has probably the least of chances to make it into the second round.
Lietuvos Rytas are one of the 2 Lithuanian teams, rather small country (3.5 million) to give two Euroleague teams. Lietuvos lives in the shadows of Zalgiris, the famous Euroleague. Their home-ground Siemens Arena with the capacity of 11,000 built in 2004, is one the most modern and biggest Arenas in Euroleague. Club qualified for the Eurolegue by reaching the ULEB cup final.
There are no major, experienced Euroleague players on the team, their best player from last year Rush left the club. Lietuvos will be targeting the second round in the group where most teams are of similar quality.
Armani Milano is coming from the Italian Seria A that is considered one of Europe's top 2 national leagues. The team is a mixture of domestic players, among them the most prominent national team player Bulleri (point guard), several players are younger than 20 years of age, American players that did not have notable NBA careers. Coach Mavrevski will be gaining his Euroleague experience. Armani Milano will be looking to secure a place to the next round by being among top 5 or 6 teams in the weakest of 3 Euroleague groups.
The new Euroleague season starts on October 22nd 2007 with the Final Four taking place in Madrid (Spain) on May 02-04. 2008. For the first time in European basketball history, several teams were able to offer to players $8-figure contracts making the Euroleague basketball a step-closer to the NBA level.
The Euroleague is contested in four phases. In the first phase (Regular season) 24 teams are divided into three groups of eight. At the end of the regular season 16 teams (first 5 teams from each group and the best 6th team from all groups) progress into the second phase where four groups are contested in a double round-robin format.
The third phase (Quarterfinals) is the knockout round where best 2 teams from each group (first-placed team of one group against second-placed team of other group) square against each other. The Final Four 2008 in Madrid will feature the winners of the quarterfinals series.
GROUP A (CSKA Moscow, TAU Cerámica, Olympiacos, Prokom Trefl Sopot, Olimpija Ljubljana, Žalgiris Kaunas, Montepaschi Siena, La Fortezza Bologna):
The group includes 3 strong pretenders for the Final Four (CSKA, TAU, Olympiacos), also 2 favorites for the Euroleague title (CSKA, Olympiacos). The Italian clubs Montepaschi (Italian champion) and La Fortezza Bologna may not have the same ambitions but are favorites to clinch the remaining 2 spots in the group that lead to the next round.
CSKA MOSCOW, current Russian Superleague Champion, with one of the highest budgets in Europe is targeting the same goal they had for the past several years, to win the Euroleague. In 2002 CSKA signed Dusan Ivkovic, the coach with plenty of national team and club titles, hoping for CSKA to win its first Euroleague title.
Ivkovic stayed with the club until 2005 with no luck of reaching that goal. His successor Ettore Messina joined the club in 2006 and won the Euroleague in his first season. Last season CSKA lost to Panathanaikos in the Athens final by a close margin. Anything other than reaching the Final Four in Madrid would be a failure for CSKA's Euroleague 2007/08 season.
Major players to leave the club past summer include Tomas Van den Spiegel, the 214cm center who left for Prokom (Poland), Oscar Torres averaged 8.7 points/23 minutes per game, now signed with Fortitudo Bologna (Italy). David Vanterpool the 34 year old guard may or may not stay at CSKA, he missed most of the last season due to injury problems.
The new-comers are Ramunas Siskauskas (small forward/shooting guard), one of Panathinaikos' main players last season helping them to win the Euroleague and Greek domestic championship titles, Marcus Goree (power forward/center) last seasons' Benetton Treviso's main player, Nikos Zisis (point guard/shooting guard) also coming from Treviso where he averaged 11 points/33 minutes per game.
The team includes Papaloukas (point guard), Euroleague 2006/07 player of the year, Euroleague 2006/07 guard of the year, J.R.Holden (point guard), established Euroleague player, play-maker for the Russian national team, and other highly experienced Euroleague clubs. CSKA's team is well experiences, has been playing together for several years and has what it takes to win the Title.
Coach Ettore Messina is known for his team's strong performance in defensive playing. During Euroleague's regular season 2006/07 through the course of 14 games CSKA was the team with best defense allowing opponents to make 65 points per game.
Messina asks for the best performance from each player during entire 40mins of play regardless what the results is and what is the team CSKA plays against.
TAU CERAMICA as one of the big names in European basketball, representative of the Spanish ACB, is sure to offer quality, competitive games. This season TAU may not have the players of MVP award potential like Louis Scola was last season (signed for the NBA's Houston Rockets) but plenty of great team players capable of making it into the Euroleague's team of the week selection in any week. Rakocevic (point guard) is able of scoring 30 points in Euroleague games, Splitter (center) can dominate playing close to the basket.
The team includes established Euroleague and National team players such as Jasaitis (small forward), Prigioni, winner of the Olympic gold medal in 2004 with Argentina. Adding players like Singleton (power forward) who had experience of playing in the NBA, the Italian League 2005 All-star game MVP, Planinic, McDonald, TAU will perform one of the strongest team plays in Euroleague, the thing needed to beat any team in decisive games.
OLYMPIACOS was one of the strong favorites to lift the trophy last seasons mainly due the fact that the Final Four was held on their home ground in Athens, Pinhas Gershon (won consecutive Euroleague titles while with Maccabi) was assigned for the coach and Macijauskas (guard) was brought from the NBA to be the team's key-player. Maciauskas missed the seasons due to injury problems and, in all, Olympiacos did not seem to have had the team needed to win the title.
All that changed this season, only ambitions stayed the same. Macijauskas is in the full swing and Olympiacos formed a powerful team with one of the biggest budgets in Europe, multi-million dollar contracts were signed with Tsakalidis (center) a new-comer from the NBA's Houston Rockets, Lynn Greer (guard) from Milwaukee and Marc Jackson (forward/center) 2000/01 NBA All-rookie team member while playing for the Golden State with 8 per points 4 rebounds per game during seven NBA seasons. MONTEPASCHI's notable players make Kaukenas (shooting guard) and Lavrinovic (center), both of them spent most of their Euro-games minutes playing in the ULEB cup and may not be the driving force needed to win games against top Euroleague teams.
Most of the time they will be double by opponents team defense and there's not enough support in other Montepaschi's players. Strong defensive teams like CSKA may allow Montepashi to score no more than 65 points just by playing good defense on those two players.
LA FORTEZZA BOLOGNA, through history the giant of European basketball winning the Euroleague titles in 1997 and 2001, is still recovering from the recent years downfall that saw them competing in the Italian second league. Bologna is expected to have a solid season, make it to the Euroleague next year through Italian championship and be among Euroleague title contenders in the upcoming seasons.
Bologna's top players like Ciacig (center) and Garri (center) have been around for some time, they can make solid performances, good enough to beat teams of similar quality such as Montepaschi or Prokom, it needs stellar performance and an additional extra player on the squad that Bologna happens not to have at the moment to beat teams such as TAU or Olympiacos. 5 American players on the team are without notable NBA stats, mostly playing in the D-league.
This leaves PROKOM and ZALGIRIS competing with the Italian teams for the 4th and 5th place that lead to the next round. Polish basketball clubs did not have big Euro results in recent years, Prokom's participation as a Euroleague team for consecutive years is a success for itself. During that time, Prokom twice made it into the Top 16, the success they will look to equal this season.
Current roster includes Travis Best (point guard), averaged 7.6 points and 3.5 assists per game in the NBA teams, Wolkowkyski (power forward/center), winner of the gold medal at Olympics 2004 with Argentina, also the former NBA players (a year with Seattle and Boston), and the biggest summer signing, Milan Gurovic (small forward), top scorer of the ULEB cup 2006/07.
ZALGIRIS is Euroleague title winner in 1999 living on its old glory at the moment, core of the team is made of domestic players, along with this summer's biggest signing DeMarcus Brown, the 33 year old player with limited playing experience in the NBA and highly experienced in the Euroleague playing for top teams for over 7 seasons. Last season Zalgiris finished the regular season with 2-12 record, this season they hope to do better as more experienced team.
Olimpija does not offer the quality needed throughout 14 games of the regular season to reach the next round. Olimpija saw some of its best players leaving the club last season, the crowd at Olimpija's home-ground Tivoli knows to be rather silent, there may not be too many spectators attending the games if bigger Euroleague teams are not to guest. The city of Ljubljana does seem to be too enthusiastic about its basketball club opposite to many other Euroleague hosting cities. Olimpija seems to be the weakest team in the group.
Group B (Unicaja Málaga, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Efes Pilsen, Aris Thessaloniki, Cibona Zagreb, Le Mans, Lietuvos Rytas Vilnius, Armani Jeans Milano):
The only group not to feature a team favorite for winning the Euroleague title. This makes the group be without great gap in quality between the teams. Unicaja as the representative of Spanish ACB, Maccabi with huge results over the last several years are expected to be among top 5 in the group of 8. All other teams would consider it having a successful Euroleague season to reach the second round.
UNICAJA is one of the 4 representatives of Europe's best national league, Spanish ACB. Unicaja took everyone by surprised to reach the Final Four last season. The team kept most of its players, Jiri Welsh (small forward) a 27-year old player with 6.7 point per game average during his NBA carrier, Jimenez (small forward) very experienced European player, winner of the World Championship 2006 gold medal with Spain, Haislip (center) the 13th pick of the NBA draft 2002.
Unicaja could easily 'sneak in' into the Final Four this years as well, they finished last seasons' first round with a modest 7-7 record and progressed to the quarter finals by being better placed than mid-sized Euroleague clubs Benneton and Aris, in the quarter finals Unicaja defeated Barcelona 2-1 overall with the 3rd game playing on home-court.
Unicaja players are mentally strong and able to keep concentration on needed level in the decisive moments of the game. Unicaja may also be the team who can be swept off by a large margin of 20-or-so points difference playing against top Euro clubs such as CSKA or Madrid, and easily lose away games at lower ranked good home-court clubs where passionate crowd boost home-teams performance as it is with Efes in Istanbul and Aris in Thessaloniki.
MACCABI had its recent glory days by winning consecutive titles in 2004 (defeated Skipper Bologna by a margin of 44 points in the final game) and 2005 (TAU Ceramica by 12 points) and losing in the finals 2006. Maccabi dynasty ended in the summer 2006 when Anthony Parker and Maceo Baston left the club to join the NBA's Toronto Raptors. Coach Pinhas Gershon also left the club.
Last year they had modest 8-6 result during regular season and were relegated in the quarter finals by CSKA, the series ended 2-1 for CSKA with CSKA winning two games by a margin of 22 and 21 points. Maccabi's club budget among the highest in Europe at the start of the 3rd millennium stagnated while in the last 2-3 years the budgets of several other European teams drastically heighten. Maccabi's team did not change significantly from the last season, all-around player Vujcic (center), Sharp (shooting guard) and Bynem (point guard) are core of the team.
Highly talented Eliyahu (power forward) is expected to be a major factor in the team's playing. New additions on the team include experienced European player David Bluthenthal (center), Marcus Fizer (forward) who signed a two-year ($900.000 per year) contract, Fizer was selected with the fourth pick of the 2000 NBA Draft by the Chicago Bulls.
Maccabi is covered on all positions, the crowd at Nokia Arena (one of the bigger venues in Euroleague) will be loud as always. Maccabi is not the title contender as it may take a season for the new-comers to adapt to the team. Reaching beyond quarter finals would be a major success for Maccabi.
Efes Pilsen has got the imperatives of reaching more than first round being probably the most popular basketball club in Turkey, country with 70 million citizens where basketball has its place. Coach David Blatt won European Championship 2007 with Russia and is considered one of the best, if not the best, coaches in Europe at the moment.
The team consists of all domestic players without big names plus 5 American players without notable NBA career. Efes Pilsen games will have publicity, the crowd will cheer them passionately, the team will hope to equal the last season’s success when they reached the second round with 8-6 record during regular season.
ARIS THESSALONIKI, as all basketball teams in Greece, lives in the shadows of PAO and Olympiacos. Aris' supporters make the club's games unique, together with Partizan crowd in Belgrade Aris is recognized to have the loudest crowd in Europe, their home-ground Alexandreio Melathron with 4,800 seats capacity is not too big but each spectator is actively involved in cheering for the team, no team regardless of its quality can claim secured win in Thessaloniki.
Domestic players with the team are not of the same glory as those playing in PAO and Olympiacos, American players did not have notable careers in the NBA, two other foreign acquisitions include Lithuanian Serapinas (small forward) and the biggest star on the team experienced Euroleague and former NBA player with limited playing experience Finn Mottola (center).
CIBONA ZAGREB, may be one of the teams with the least of ambitions, imperatives and means to reach the second round. There may not be too many spectators involved at the 5,400 capacity arena if the giants of European basketball do not guest in the City. Their best player Kus left the club past summer, no big names were added on the team that last year ended Euroleague season being placed 7th in the group of 8 teams. Cibona will be targeting the group's 5th or 6th place in order to reach the second round.
LE MANS is one of the 2 French teams in this year's Euroleague, country that did not see its club posting major results in Euroleague in recent years. Last season Le Mans finished as the 7th team in group and did not progress into the second round. There are no big names on the team. Le Mans, along with Cibona, has probably the least of chances to make it into the second round.
Lietuvos Rytas are one of the 2 Lithuanian teams, rather small country (3.5 million) to give two Euroleague teams. Lietuvos lives in the shadows of Zalgiris, the famous Euroleague. Their home-ground Siemens Arena with the capacity of 11,000 built in 2004, is one the most modern and biggest Arenas in Euroleague. Club qualified for the Eurolegue by reaching the ULEB cup final.
There are no major, experienced Euroleague players on the team, their best player from last year Rush left the club. Lietuvos will be targeting the second round in the group where most teams are of similar quality.
Armani Milano is coming from the Italian Seria A that is considered one of Europe's top 2 national leagues. The team is a mixture of domestic players, among them the most prominent national team player Bulleri (point guard), several players are younger than 20 years of age, American players that did not have notable NBA careers. Coach Mavrevski will be gaining his Euroleague experience. Armani Milano will be looking to secure a place to the next round by being among top 5 or 6 teams in the weakest of 3 Euroleague groups.