Any tips for someone wanting to get into Euroleague? Don't know much about it, but looking for a new sport/league to watch, and Euroleague seems like a good one, since it has a decent following, and it actually has a pipeline to American sports (the NBA).
Any big rule differences? How do the styles differ? Also, I dunno how to pick a team to root for...
Cool, I hope you watch some games and enjoy it.
So, starting from rules, this page has a full breakdown of the differences:
http://www.fiba.com/rule-differences============================================
Regarding playing styles: this often gives rise to controversy. To my experience, there are both American stereotypes of European bball (soft and slow) as well as European stereotypes of American bball: "they rely on athleticism rather than technique", "they don't play D" (I know, I know, but I've heard this countless times over here about the NBA), "too much iso", "they don't listen to the coach" etc. IMO it's better to ignore all that and just watch and find out for yourself.
Watching some Eurobasket games this September will also give you a good idea, as the playing style is similar and you have many Euroleague stars playing.
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About teams, it's complicated and it might take a while to get to know them.
Turkey has arguably the best teams right now: Fenerbahce won the Euroleague this year and they have lots of ex-NBA players among which Datome. Not a bad team to root for if you like winning. And they have the (by far) most successful coach (Obradovic).
Other strong Turkish teams are Darussafaka (coached by Blatt), Anadolu Efes and others (they have a lot of depth).
In Spain, Real and Madrid has always been strong. saltlover's favourite, Doncic, is playing there.
Barcelona is going through a bit of a crisis, but they should be back to the top soon enough. I personally like their coach (Bartzokas) and a young Greek-Bulgarian forward they have (Vezenkov). Dario can fill you up if you want to know more about the Spanish teams.
CSKA is the perennial champion in Russia and a very strong team. They might have difficulty replacing Teodosic though.
In Greece, you have Olympiakos and Panathinaikos. Panathinaikos has the advantage of having almost the exact same uniform as the Celtics - that's why many of us made naturally the transition from one team to the other.
Israel has traditionally a strong league and good teams, with Maccabi being the strongest, atlhough they are in a decline lately. Then you have Lithuania, France and Germany: teams there don't spend enough money to make it to the top, but are competitive.
PS I forgot mentioning Androslav, he knows a lot more about the Euroleague than I do. He and Dario are the people to ask.