Annareddy 1

Shivakiran Annareddy

Professor Gardiakos

ENC 1102

13 October 2020

Research Proposal Rough Draft

The topic of this research proposal may not be considered to be part of an

academic nature. However, it does indeed make a huge impact with certain

discourse communities that place a huge interest in sports and more specifically,

basketball. In this research proposal, I am proposing to explore the topic of

factors that are viewed to be responsible for the major changes in difference in

competition between the NBA and EuroLeague. This may seem like a surprise and

not a topic of much importance, because the NBA is viewed to have the top-most

competition for the sport of basketball. However, reports from analysts have

proved otherwise and have concluded that change is coming in the EuroLeague.

The exact question that I will be proposing to explore is what factors are

responsible for the drastic change in difference in competition between the NBA

and EuroLeague. Although personal interest may seem to be the main motive
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behind my purpose for researching this topic, the impact of this topic can be

much bigger than what is seen by the human eye. The NBA, National Basketball

Association, has always been viewed to have the highest and toughest

competition possible for basketball in the world. Everyone viewed the NBA to

consist of the best basketball teams and players in the world. There have been

some people that have recognized overseas leagues to have the second toughest

competition. However, over the past decade, more specifically in the 2000s,

analysts have concluded through various forms of research through statistics that

the EuroLeague is catching up to the NBA in terms of difficulty of competition.

Before, if NBA players wanted to take a break from the NBA for a couple seasons

due to reasons such as rehabilitation from injury or to improve their game, they

would just go and sign with a team in the EuroLeague. Since the competition was

publicly viewed to have been much easier in the EuroLeague, players felt that it

was a great way to get some practice in and warm up for the actual NBA season.

Along with personal interest, another motivation for me wanting to pursue this

research project is that I want to see how this would impact the future of NBA

players and the future of young players working to enter the professional

basketball leagues.
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This research topic will definitely need a lot of evidence in order to support

the conclusions I will have to formulate to explain the drastic change. I was

thinking of utilizing the research methods of case studies and rhetorical analysis.

Rhetorical analysis will help me explain why this happened or it will help me

identify the key components or aspects of basketball that have helped the

EuroLeague increase its difficulty of competition. In a way, rhetorical analysis will

be the key to help me identifying the responsible factors. Case studies will help

me find pictures, tables, and graphs that represent data or trends that visually

symbolize the difference in competition changing. This would make the paper

visually appealing and it would help the reader to follow along better instead of

them just reading a bunch of words and being left confused. There are many

sources that analyze the change in competition of basketball in the EuroLeague

and NBA over the past decade and those will be vital for supporting my claims

that I will make on how this so called ‘impossible’ change was made possible. In

addition to all this, I will also include statistics of individual players that compare

their performance playing in the EuroLeague vs their performance in the NBA. I

also think that the inclusion of interviews of players talking about their

experiences in the EuroLeague and NBA and why they went to one league and
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took a break from the other league would be helpful in supporting observations

or claims about the competitions in each respective league.

After finishing the research and analyzing how the change was made

possible, it would be important to note that this research would place a big

impact on not only the intended discourse community, but also on the NBA and

EuroLeague. This research would spark a new interest in the intended discourse

community as people may start to eventually talk about the EuroLeague as much

as the NBA. Also, this research can make a huge impact on the NBA and

EuroLeague as it can signify a trend in the future that the EuroLeague will

eventually become as popular as the NBA. The NBA may lose some revenue in the

future if this trend keeps on happening, because the EuroLeague may eventually

spark an interest in the audiences’ eyes. There may be a chance that the

EuroLeague eventually becomes the most watched professional basketball league

in the future. It obviously seems impossible for that to happen now, but it can still

be made possible. Lastly, this research places an impact on the professional

basketball players as it may change their route they take for rehab and it can

affect the future generation of basketball stars as they might get more interested

to enter the EuroLeague draft instead of the NBA draft.

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Annotated Bibliography

Mandić, Radivoj, et al. “Trends in NBA and Euroleague Basketball: Analysis and Comparison of

Statistical Data from 2000 to 2017.” PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, 2019.

Radivoj Mandić and the authors of this academic journal work at the University of

Belgrade and are part of the faculty of sport and physical education. As they are from a European

country, it should not be much of a surprise that their research deals with analyzing change in

European sports. This academic journal deals with analyzations of various aspects of basketball

that help signify a change in the performance of players in the Euro League from the years 2000

to 2017. The data involved in this academic journal is obtained by the authors from various

sources that is mentioned in their works cited page of the journal. The data is presented through

the use of tables and graphs. This is relevant to my research, because it explicitly helps convey

how the competition in the Euro League is increasing in terms of difficulty and could possibly

achieve the status of NBA level competition in the future. Also, it implies the impact or trends

that can occur in the future on the journey of basketball players around the world, which

acknowledges me on the effects it can place on the targeted discourse community.

Gough, Christina. “Total NBA Revenue 2001-2018.” Statista, Christina Gough, 27 Feb. 2020.

Christina Gough is a research expert on covering sports and video gaming. She was the

one that obtained the data involved in the graph of the revenue that the NBA has made every

year starting from 2001 and ending at 2018. This graph is deemed reliable as Christina Gough

even placed a pretty big explanation underneath the graph to explain the meaning of each bar on
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the bar graph presented. She even went on to include special footnotes about the graph, which let

us know some fun facts about certain years in the NBA. Along with this, I even went and

searched up the total revenue made each year by the NBA from 2001 to 2018 and compared it

with the statistics presented on the graph and it led me to view the graph as valid. This data will

be useful to me as it will help me compare the revenues of the NBA with the revenues of the

Euro League in each respective year, which will lead me to forming certain conclusions on the

effects that each league’s competition placed on each other’s revenue.

Content, Sponsored, et al. “Euroleague Basketball's Great Leaps Forward.” SportBusiness, 3

Sept. 2019.

There are many authors that have published this scholarly article, but they are all backed

by credibility for being research analysts and specializing in the sport of basketball. The authors

made sure that they backed up the information presented in the scholarly article with quotes from

players in the Euro League and people that are associated with the aspects of the Euro League’s

growth that they were exploring. This scholarly article will be very useful in my research due to

its organization and inclusion of many reliable supporting details. Instead of just randomly listing

out the reasons why there has been so much growth in the Euro League’s popularity around the

world, the authors made sure it would be easy for the viewer to follow the information presented

by dividing the specific reasons into sections and placing the respective supporting details for

each reason in those sections. I can include these reasons and their details from this source for

explaining how the growth in popularity of the Euro League and competition is catching up with

the NBA.
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“Euroleague Basketball Competitions Experience Huge Growth under New Structure.” Welcome

to EUROLEAGUE BASKETBALL, Euroleague.net, 12 Apr. 2017.

The authors in this scholarly article are all under the association called ‘Euroleague.net’.

However, this shall still be deemed as credible, because this is backed up by the Euro League

basketball association and this article deals with how their revenue has increased with the

implementation of their new structure of competitive basketball. This article even provides data

supporting the main points made by the authors working for the Euro League basketball

association. It goes even more in-depth about the analyzations of revenues by comparing the

revenue statistics of various basketball leagues all across Europe. If not already known, the Euro

League is sometimes called the Turkish Airlines Euro League, which is a point made clear in this

article. These statistics involved and the explanation of the new competitive structure will assist

me in forming a reasonable reason for the increase in recognition of Euro League basketball

around the world. This article can help list rational numbers for each statistic formulated from

previous research by the authors.

Lahman, Sean. “Luka Doncic International Stats.” Basketball, Sean Lahman, 15 Oct 2018.

Sean Lahman is renowned on this website for his donation of research and statistics for

each basketball player and team around the world. It is worthy to not that this source may not be

viewed that this source is not credible, because it does not have a published date, but the last time

it was edited was October 15, 2018. It is important to note that there will not be a specific

publishing date for these kinds of sources, because the data presented in this source always
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changes based on how the basketball teams and respective players perform in the games, which

occur almost year-round. The statistics presented in this source will be helpful as Luka Doncic is

a renowned player in the NBA and he is known for transferring to the NBA after playing a

couple years in the Euro League. I feel that I can compare his performances in the NBA and

Euro League based on the respective statistics given by the source, which will help with

analyzing the kind of competition that would have been presented to him.

“Luka Doncic.” NBA Stats, National Basketball Association, 14 Apr. 2020.

The authors that have published this page all work under the National Basketball

Association, so no matter who publishes the page, it will be noted that the national basketball

association has published the page. Also, it should be noted that these kinds of sources do not

have a published date, because the statistics are constantly being updated. Therefore, the date

listed in the bibliography is the last time the page was edited, and it was April 14, 2020. This

page lists the statistics of Luka Doncic throughout his time in the NBA. These statistics listed

will help me analyze his performance in the national basketball association and compare it to

how he has performed in the euro league. This will help generate an idea of how the competition

must have been to Luka Doncic and it can be inferred to see where he must have had tougher

competition. Since he is viewed as a star in both leagues, analyzing his statistics would help with

concluding how each league’s competition compares to one another.

Lahman, Sean. “Kristaps Porzingis International Stats.” Basketball, Sean Lahman, 15 Oct. 2018.

Sean Lahman is contributed a lot to this source as he is known for his research on the

statistics of basketball players and teams for this website. As mentioned before, the date listed in
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the source’s citation is the date it was last edited, which is October 15, 2018. These kinds of

sources do not contain a certain published date, because the stats are always constantly updated

for each respective basketball team and player. This is due to basketball games occurring almost

year-round, which constantly affects a lot of statistics. One basketball game can affect so many

statistics in the basketball world, so there is a reason why these kinds of sources need to be

constantly updated. The reason why this page was last updated two years ago and not recently is,

because it is about Kristaps Porzingis’ Euro League career, which ended more than 2 years ago.

Therefore, there are not many updates that need to be made to this specific page. These stats can

help me analyze and formulate an opinion on his performance and compare it to his performance

in the NBA.

“Kristaps Porzingis.” NBA Stats, National Basketball Association, 14 Apr. 2020.

Although it is noted that the National Basketball Association has published this page, there

are actually other authors that have made contributions to this page. However, those authors

work under the National Basketball Association, so therefore it is always noted that the National

Basketball Association is the publisher of pages included in this specific source. Also, as already

mentioned multiple times before in the bibliography, these kinds of sources do not contain a

specific published date. This is due to the fact that NBA games occur year-round and statistics

need to be constantly update to be as accurate as possible for analysts and researchers to use.

Therefore, the date included in the bibliography is the last time the page was updated or edited,

and that is April 14, 2020. This page will be useful in my research, because Kristaps Porzingis is

considered a star in the Euro League and NBA, so comparing his performances in both of the
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leagues will be crucial in developing a comparison about the difficulty of competition in both

leagues.

“Best of the Decade: Off-Court Advances.” Welcome to EUROLEAGUE BASKETBALL,

Euroleague.net, 6 Jan. 2020.

The authors that have published this page are all recognized to be under the association

known as the Euro League basketball association. Even though the authors names and work have

not been listed, the information presented in the source may be deemed as credible, because all

the information is backed up by ‘Euroleague.net’. This article deals with how the off-court

changes also played a role in the development of the popularity and recognition of Euro League

basketball around the world. The specific off-court advances have been listed as sections in this

source. This is very helpful to me as a reader as it makes the source easy to follow and I won’t

have to read through the whole article if I wanted to locate a certain piece of information. The

subheadings make everything much easier to locate and follow. The information presented in the

source is beneficial to my research as it helps convey the idea that the off-court changes play a

role in the growth of the popularity and recognition of difficulty of competition of the Euro

League and that on-court changes are not the only factors responsible for such drastic change.

Zachari, Antigoni. “The Progress Card of 10 European NBA Draft Prospects.” Eurohoops,
Eurohoops, 1 Jan. 2020.

This scholarly article is written by Antigoni Zachari. Antigoni Zachari is an analyst that

works under the ‘Eurohoops’ association and he specializes in analyzing NBA draft prospects

that are currently playing basketball in the Turkish Airlines Euro League. The analyzation of
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such prospects help convey the kind of NBA talent that the Euro League is producing, which can

further indicate the kind of competition that is available in the Euro League. The author makes

sure to include the legacy of past Euro League stars that have made it big in the NBA such as

Dirk Nowitzki and Luka Doncic. Dirk Nowitzki is a retired basketball player, but he is the one of

the first European basketball players that started the trend of entering the NBA and he serves as

an inspiration to many young European stars that are trying to or have already made the NBA,

such as Luka Doncic. The information presented in the article helps with the analyzation of how

the competition is increasing in the Euro League, which is indicated by the increasing number of

NBA draft prospects that the Euro League is developing.