I was quite a bit shocked when I saw Monday morning that the first game of the Euroleague week was already today. While ALBA fans in various forums were still discussing whether their game against Fenerbahce in the O2 World will be a home game or not (bear in mind that Berlin is sometimes called the third-largest Turkish city in the World, which is not true by the way), I was wondering how to manage my time and team in order to write a quality article about the changes. I did change my plans a bit and the Euroleague Power Rankings will only be published later.
So what is the situation right now? My team performed surprisingly well last week with my best-ever ranking in the general standings: 928th. So now is the time to really stabilize and earn constant ranking points. The time for experimentation is over. Now I need the big guys, the money players. I do this the same way as my weekend predecessor Javi and always go for my trades while writing the article. But I do write what comes through my head and don’t erase the changes I did not make, as you may have seen the weeks before. So enough blah-blah, let’s move on to this week’s tips.
A quick look at the Injury List, though as incomplete as always, at least helped me to avoid having an injured player on my team. What I see is that Olympiacos has three injured forwards that probably won’t play so this might be a good possibility for an interesting gamble. Giorgios Printezis looks pretty interesting in that area, as he costs only 28 credits and should be able to better than my “steal” for last week, Rodrigo de la Fuente. Mirza Begic has reached the maximum of his potential in my opinion so he’ll be out, as I want to sign somebody who will be present in the Top 16. I’m going for similar thinking on Ioannis Bouroussis, who should be at the top of his potential at 80 credits. So he is out, too.
With the Greek center out, I have enough money in the bank to go for money in the bank in terms of centers, too: Tiago Splitter is in the house and should easily score 20+ ranking points against Union Olimpija. By gambling on Printezis, I still have the opportunity to go for Mirsad Türkcan, who I expect to go strong against ALBA Berlin, as Patrick Femerling is still limited in his minutes and the rest of the inside players are not known for the defensive excellency. So the self-declared best friend of Pat Ewing should excel in the offensive rebound action as the Turks may come up with a lot of (missed) long-distance shots.
OUT: Rodrigo de la Fuente (Roma), Mirza Begic (Olimpija) and Ioannis Bouroussis (Olympiacos).
IN: Giorgios Printezis (Olympiacos), Mirsad Türkcan (Fenerbahce) and Tiago Splitter (TAU).
After having made my trades, I took a quick look through the different rankings within our the BallinEurope Private League. Even if only the overall ranking counts to win the great Euroleague and K1X prizes, it’s always nice to see the name of some different teams at the top. And here’s the surprise of the day: David Hein and his “Garth Monsters” team is 5th in overall three-point ranking. Congratulations, Dave! Felicidades to our Spanish guys Javi and Pablo, who are topping the rebound rankings, while Penny Hardaway fan cappe is leading the assists table.
Good luck for everyone and don’t miss the deadline!
