Kind of offensive. We should be 8 or 9. Fran could only think of two worse leagues?

Euroleague, Euro Cup, Spain, VTB in Russia - yes

Greece, FIBA BCL - maybe

Turkey, Italy, France, Germany, Adriatic - no

Fran's only got the NBL two spots above China's CBA, take it with a grain of salt.

We are above the CBA which is not too bad considering our salary cap and the Chinese ones.

A lucrative tv contract lol sure Fran

So the Serie A is ranked #6 because half of the league is made up of imports that are rarely paid on time?

Great list.

Judging from his comments Fraschilla's ranking appears strongly determined by the extent to which a league contributes to NBA player development. Fraschilla ranks leagues higher if it is a training ground for future NBA talent or as a place to warehouse NBA discards. My reasoning is different - ultimately the strength of a competition reduces to the playing ability of teams in the league. So my test is - would top teams in the NBL beat top teams in the Adriatic League or Russian or Italy or France? Such matches cannot be arranged, so I figure the best indicator we have is the performance of national teams at a world/olympic championship. Australia consistently performs higher than 12th; even when we have fewer representatives in the NBA.

So you rank the NBL against other leagues by how good Bogut, Motum, Mills, Delavadova, Maker, Baines etc would go against those other countries?

Firstly it is great that we get a mention. The opinions I would value on this is from players that have competed in the NBL and in leagues rated above us in this list. No1 based on competition standard but also on how you are treated and paid by the club you are playing for.

People are getting a bit bent out of shape over nothing here. Fact is there is way more than 12 national leagues in the world - way, way, way more. He is not saying the NBL is one of the worst, but one of the best.You can split hairs as to whether the NBL is better than some of the other leagues but the fact is we rarely even follow those leagues to know for sure anyway. All in all, he rates the NBL as a good league and that's a good thing.

And when it comes to Fran, he predicted Boomers would come about 9th at the Olympics last year, so his opinion can be taken with a grain of salt.

I also very much doubt that Fraschilla has watched any or most of the leagues in question there, basically it is framed from the point of view of which produces the most NBA prospects, rather than actual quality. With that said, I think he would base his opinion on speaking to Oz NBA players (and of course from other non-US countries), Australian coaches involved in the US college scene who he meets at camps/conventions from time to time (Marty Clarke, David Patrick, John Rillie, Chris Harriman- I've heard him mention the last two)and international player agents.

Interestingly, I remember reading an article on intl basketball in the old Streets and Smith sometime back in the mid 1990s written by a certain Joel Bell. The article basically tried to poo-poo all things European at that time and he stated that Europe (there was no Euroleague at that time) may not even be a better the best basketball on offer after the NBA. Paraphrasing, he stated that Perth and Melbourne would beat 'most, if not all European clubs'. I found out much later that Bell was/is the agent for Lanard Copeland.

Anon #771, by memory Fraschilla's original article didn't include some of the composite European league (Eurocup, maybe Euroleague). It didn't change in terms of being a domestic league.

To be honest the rankings are a bit skewed because of the addition of the European-wide and regional leagues. In a pure one-country/one-league sense, he has us ranked 8th, which is probably about right....

1. Spain
2. Turkey
3. Russia
4. Italy
5. France
6. Greece
7. Germany
8. Australia
9. Israel
10. China

The NBL is definitely ahead of Greece these days, their league dropped away with their economy, as you would expect.

The leagues in Turkey, Italy, France and Germany are certainly no better than the NBL, trying to separate them on standard would be a bit naive because there is lots of crossover between the comps.

Even the VTB United League, which is strong at the top end but weak at the bottom, couldn't really be classified as much better than the above group.

For mine, the NBA and then Euroleague are clear on top, then Spain is slightly ahead of the next group of six or so leagues. The Greek league has dropped away quite a bit since the GFC.