Yes, but the NBA champs with the same team?

Anon, Didn't FC Barcelona defeat the Lakers shortly after their last championship with everyone playing?

No Patty

Baynes did pretty well for 3 min 4 pts and 3 rebounds but those turnovers must have been costly. And he has to know he can't get "lippy" with pop

Since 2003, when Euroleague and NBA signed a contract to start playing these games, the NBA is 34-3 in games played in USA and Canada where the games are played with 3 NBA refs.

While the NBA is 12-8 in games played in Europe, where the games are played with 2 NBA refs and 1 Euroleague ref.

All games are played under NBA rules.

So obviously, if you just give the Euroleague teams even one Euroleague ref to balance things out, so that the NBA refs can't assure the NBA teams win the games...even playing under NBA rules, the Euroleague teams are quite competitive.

All the constant talk about the NBA being so "vastly superior" to the Euroleague has never been true.

Also, going back to the games from before Euroleague Basketball when they signed this contract with the NBA, and it was just individual exhibition games and things like McDonald's Championship and stuff like that with old FIBA Euroleague....

Just for example then three times a Euroleague team has beaten the defending NBA champions now.

Maccabi beat the NBA champion Washington Bullets in 1978.

Barca beat the NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers in 2010.

Now Alba beat the NBA champion Spurs in 2014.

It's not like this is anything new. It's the third time a Euroleague team beat a defending NBA champion, and it happened the first time all the way back in the late 1970s.

Baynes needs to get his emotions in check real quick.

He's petulant behaviour at the WC was terrible, lose the ego son !!

Speaking of the McDonald's Championship I still have on VHS tape somewhere that game when the Houston Rockets spanked the Perth Wildcats by about 50 points even though Hakeem & Drexler didn't play.

NBL are 0-1 vs NBA.

but it wasn't fair as back then NBL played until October and everyone else started in October. So Wildcats beat Giants quickly went on a plane from Perth via Singapore to London which was pre season for all other clubs

they were hungover and then had to play in the tourney. yet still beat Euroleague champions Real Madrid before facing Houston.

so Wildcats 0-1 but beat the Euroleague champs, no other NBL side can say that, man Wildcats are the premier team in the NBL if you think about it all those titles plus beating Euroleague champs

Adelaide when they went to the tournament won 0 games.

sorry Wildcats played off for 3rd after Rockets game and beat the Euroleague champions Real Madrid

NBL champions vs. Euroleague champions record is 1-0

:)

They did not try anything out. They just got beat. Same way the Lakers just got beat by Barca and Celtics just got beat by Fener.

NBA teams can't just show up and win against decent Euroleague teams in Europe. A top 15-20 Euroleague team, playing these games in Europe, they can regularly beat the best NBA teams, even playing under NBA rules and when the NBA teams are trying to win.

This is nothing remotely like Team USA versus some random European national team. These are NBA teams with a few good players and a bunch of role players and that is it playing against Euroleague clubs, not national teams that have only a small restriction or limitation on what players they can have on their teams, unlike on their national teams, which are strictly limited to their domestic players, and in many cases (Greece, Turkey, Serbia - countries like that) half to 3/4 of the best players they have never play anyway.

This is a completely different scenario also in that these NBA teams also have to actually go play a road game, something Team USA never has to do ever.

"Adelaide when they went to the tournament won 0 games."

The 36ers (or any other NBL team bar Perth) never played in the tournament.

I facepalm if anon is a sixer fan

1999 McDonald's Championship

14 October 1999

Vasco de Gama (Brazil) 90-79 Adelaide 36ers

16 October 1999

Adelaide 36ers 91-84 Hekmeh (Lebanon)

So they played two sides both the easiest two in the tournament and won one game against the weakest of them all from the Asia zone

contrast to Wildcats decent performance

I don't remember the 36ers playing in the McDonald's Championship and neither does Wikipedia it seems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_Championship

anon #299 hahahaha get off the crack bro

Wiki does:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_McDonald%27s_Championship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_McDonald's_Championship

I was thinking recently Euro teams are getting good results vs NBA yet all the games are played with NBA 48mins and their rules etc.

so it is swayed to the NBA's favour yet they keep dropping more and more games hmmm

Since Barca beat the Lakers in that NBA champ versus Euroleague champ game back in 2010, the Euroleague is 6-15 against the NBA in the last 21 games.

And the Euroleague is 5-11 against the NBA in the last 16 games. All of these games are played under NBA rules.

Now if you back before that Barca game, the NBA teams had won 18 straight games.

So it's pretty clear that it took the Euroleague teams awhile to catch on to how to play under the NBA rules, how to deal with the NBA refs, and generally just how to approach these games.

But since they have, you can see an enormous shift in the results of the games. From them losing 18 in a row, to them winning 6 of the last 21 and 5 of the last 16 games.

And even now they have beaten two defending NBA champions in that same time, in both the Lakers and the Spurs.

I think this pretty much proves that the argument that is always made that Euroleague teams would be destroyed if they had to play under NBA rules is a complete myth.

If watch these game in recent years you can see that the Euroleague teams have pretty much completely mastered how to handle the NBA rules and in general they have no problem at all with the speed or athleticism of the NBA teams either.

I mean absolutely no problem with it at all. It's actually a bit odd because for example, you look at that Maccabi team that played the Cavs and Nets and they are very average. Mediocore at best probably as a Euroleague team.

The Cavs and Nets were both deeper teams, both better coaches teams obviously, and also both of them were much bigger teams physically by a lot.

But the argument is always how NBA is so much "more athletic than Euroleague". This is the kind of stuff that really makes no sense at all to anyone with a brain or that actually watches these games.

In truth, that Maccabi team was hell of a lot more athletic than either the Cavs or the Nets and they were flying and running circles around them the both the whole game. They were just not as deep, nor big enough to match up to them at all.

Of course their starting PF and C missed the Cavs game and their starting C missed the Nets game. So that probably contributed to that size and deopth problem.

But the point is that they didn't lose because of anything to do with lack of speed, quickness, athleticism, jumping ability, all these nonsense things people always say Euroleague teams don't have and are inferior at compared to NBA teams, and so thus, playing under NBA rules they would get "destroyed".

In truth, that team was more athletic than the Cavs and Nets and if anything the NBA rules actually HELPED them. They could run out in open court and play small ball all they wanted and their speed and quickness was just way too much, creating open space all the time.

They just lacked enough depth and you could see them get tired and then they started missing wide open shots because of being tired. So maybe those injured players added in and they don't miss so many open shots.

Point is, they could get any open shot they wanted to anywhere, anytime, wide open 3s. wide open dunks, lobs, fast breaks, oops, taking it right down the lane and stuffing it, driving it to the hoop again and again, breaking defenders down one on one off the bounce, etc.

Just lack of depth and size prevented finishing many easy opportunities, contributed them by getting tired.

And watching Spurs an old NBA team play against teams like Fener and Alba, which are also average Euroleague teams, you saw similar things. Alba was quicker, faster, more athletic with their guards and perimeter.

Fener was more so in their front court. And actually neither of those teams was undersized, with Fener even probably being bigger than the Spurs.

Alba and Fener though also clearly don't have the same depth, so that wears teams like that down though. But how many NBA teams have same depth as the Spurs? Zero.

It really is a bunch of nonsense about the NBA being more athletic than the Euroleague. It simply is NOT.

Team USA is more athletic than Lithuania or Finland, or Ukraine, or Turkey national teams.

NBA professional league isn't more athletic than Euroleague professional league. That's a clear myth.