After the first games in the French and Spanish leagues, this Monday will start the last of the European Fantasy Leagues that we will cover. The former Euroleague Fantasy Challenge now called after the new main sponsor of the event. Euroleague already published the list of all the players and their prices, so here is a first analysis of the situation before you start to set up your rosters from tomorrow.
But first of all, let’s look at the two important changes in the rules. From this year on, there is a new limit in terms of teams that you can create with your account. It has been increased to 10. Me personally, I am not in favor of this change as this gives more possibilities for people to gamble with 10 teams at the beginning and then only using their 2 or 3 teams that succeed after the first days. My personal experience showed me that I was way more successful when using one team only and concentrating on the best moves for this team than trying to build as many good rosters as possible. So this year again, I will only be present with ONE team.
The second change is by far more important and I could not really believe my eyes when I saw it in the official announcement of the Euroleague.
Keep in mind that unlimited trades will be allowed until Monday, October 20 at 19:45 CET, one hour before the Euroleague Basketball Opening Game in Vitoria! From then on, only THREE TRADES will be allowed per team until the end of the regular season!
This is absolutely incredible in my eyes that you are now only allowed to make three trades until the end of the regular season. Before, you had three trades on every game day and this was the funny part to make adjustments to your team at every moment. This is over now and you have to be extremely careful with your changes in order to have some left when your players get injured. This whole change makes me think though to create ten teams in order to stay away from eventual injuries. In my opinion, this change is a very bad idea and goes away from the fun that the contest had the years before. Now, you build your team right from the start and hope you get no major injuries.
UPDATE: After clarification with the Euroleague officials, there is no new rule in terms of changes in your Fantasy team. It will remain at three per WEEK.
So let’s take a first look at the players and their market value. The most expensive player this year is Nikola Pekovic and this will make him probably the less chosen player of the whole competition. Pekovic put up big time numbers for Partizan last season but now within Panathinaikos, his role is absolutely different and he will most likely no produce the same numbers again. The same situation counts probably for Terence Morris who I would not take to my team from the start. Josh Childress looks interesting at a price of 72 but my guess is that his value will drop a bit in the beginning until he has fully adapted his game to Europe and then he could be a very good Fantasy player because of his versatility and the possibility of lots of 10% bonuses on Olympiacos wins. Another player that could be interesting to have on your team is Ricardo Greer who was the main man of SIG Strasbourg in the Euroleague a few years ago and even went for the best Ranking average after the regular season.
We will have of course more extensive coverage of the Fantasy League in the upcoming weeks and we will feature a private league as well again. So be prepared and check the stats…
