Yeah, so being from Greece means that I'm automatically exposed to the European side of basketball.
By semi-professional I mean that I'm involved with running a basketball club at a decent enough level(but that's light years away from Euroleague level) in the 1st tier of the domestic competitions and I was kind of running the team, sometimes involved with squad building as well and I am bombarded on a daily basis by basketball agents looking to move their scrubs to our scrubs league and get transfer updates :D
But all this is unpaid, since there's no real money at most levels of this sports. If anything, it even costs money to participate here, as there isn't any important source of revenue. The only people that get paid are players, coaches and the medical teams and that's not even always the case for everyone out there. Professionalism in European basketball is for the less than 1% privileged teams. Same applies with volleyball, handball, water polo, rugby and several other sports we have over here with not enough support. Depends where you are really. I'm not based in Greece mainland so that's an issue. There are 2 clubs in Greece that are at the top of the professional side.
As for how the Euroleague/European game translated to the NBA. It typically doesn't. We're talking about two alien sports to each other. NBA is all about the individual managing to create his own shot or nowadays a version of the 2000s Euro-style where it is to get the first open shot triggered, although in Europe it was mostly to get the first highly probable shot. So you'll see 1 or 2 players pass up a chance to throw an unmarked three pointer if there's a better option somewhere. So European basketball is more efficiently structured, but obviously the talent isn't as great as what you have in the NBA. The NBA players aren't willing to be tamed by coaching, whereas in Europe I've seen American former college players that were even drafted by NBA teams cry at practice sessions because they were yelled at by coaches for just messing up a step or a dribble. It's pretty common to see coaches yell at everyone for little to no reason and no one thinks much of it. Typically players adapt to all that and follow what the coach says and the yelling is minimized :D Not all coaches yell of course, but more do than do not. In the NBA, it's unlikely to see any coach yell at an NBA player, let alone a superstar. He'd pack his bags the next day.
European players are adaptable to various coaching styles, as long as there is one. They grew up playing from 5-11 years old for different coaches and then entered youth competitive basketball (typically 15+ years old) under different coaches every 2 seasons until they're moving to the first team at the highest level. That's like 6 coaches on average before they even step foot on a men's competitive level. You don't teach talent, you can't teach shooting, so entire focus is on fundamentals, playing style and adapting to your teammates.
So even if you have a player that's always been the best at every level, this is how he's mentally prepped. You know the American side better than myself, so you can feel the contrast just by reading this.
We still have high school competitions but nobody actually cares about those.
The best indicator for US players adapting to European basketball is how they fared at NCAA level. Since most kinda skip it, it's hard to see them adjust properly. The cultural gap is huge and not everyone is mentally strong to adapt, or have such willingness. A decent American NBA player may prefer to be a scrub in the NBA than a good player on a great European team, which is an option they have. Not that many achieve it, and it's because of them, not because Europe is bad or better or anything.
Europeans on the other hand typically cannot do things that you see from American superstars. They can shoot lights out and bully you on fundamentals by tricky (legal) steps. And the NBA allows an extra step + that gather nonsense so it's pretty much like rugby for guys like Adetokubo.
The other thing is that the NBA is focused on a short rotation where the starting lineup is important. Basketball is a sport where you can make changes anytime you want, so that's not really important for European teams. You can see 9-11 man rotations, probably not so much nowadays as 10 years ago - due to less money being in the game. Players won't complain about not starting. Players won't complain about their playing time unless it's close to zero and granted that there are at least 4 other players that don't see enough of the court. So out of 40 minutes in a game, you won't care much if you're averaging 23 minutes a night. But you'll be called at times to play 35/40 minutes.
Who's closing the games matters most, but again, you can see coaches change their lineup 3-5 times in the last 2 minutes, depending on how close the game is and I'm not even considering foul trouble.
Also, analytics are used differently, although they're also using the core stuff that NBA like Kinexon or Synergy. If you want to see who's an important player for a team, you'll check how many minutes he has when the score is tight or during clutch time in 4th quarter (last 2-3 minutes, depending on score difference) and you always have to adjust for foul trouble. Since players are playing similar amounts of minutes with their "backups", you check how many of those minutes were at a more important stage and you also check if the other players used in that position were in foul trouble (2 fouls in 1st quarter, 3 fouls by early 3rd quarter or 4 fouls in the late stages of the game are typically used).
You're not going to see coaches base their entire system on analytics.
Now off to the 4th quarter of the final. Let's hope for a fighting spirit from Serbia to take this to OT, I'd like to see more of this :D
This a genetic gift? A cultural advantage? 
9/13/2023 1:11 PM
