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Shivakiran Annareddy

Professor Gardiakos

ENC 1102

17 November 2020

Factors Responsible for Increase in Euro League Basketball Competition

Ever since I was a little child, basketball was always one of my favorite sports in the

world. Even though I started to play the sport once I entered middle school, it was one of the

sports that I watched the most even when I was in elementary school. It has been a big part of my

life as I have spent a lot of time playing basketball throughout my life. The reason as to why I

was influenced by my peers to start watching the national basketball association, or NBA, is very

largely due to the popularity of the league in the United States of America. When I was in

elementary school, I had no idea that a league called the Euro League existed, because I thought

the NBA just consisted of players from various countries all over the world. From what I can

remember, I was introduced to the existence of the Euro League during middle school when I

heard that a basketball player was going into rehabilitation to take some time to recover from his

injury and he would go play in the Euro League to get his game back to how he would like it to

be. However, this player was not a great player or was not like a renowned human being or an

All-Star in the NBA. Therefore, the idea of the Euro League being involved in his recovery

process thoroughly slipped my mind. I did not care much about the Euro League back then due

to American basketball and the National Basketball Association being the most dominant

basketball team and league in the world. Even when the Olympics took place or the basketball
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world cup had taken place, USA was always the favored team to take home the gold medal and

the world cup trophy from the respective competitions.

However, throughout the 21st century, my perspective on all of this had changed. I

eventually began to realize that the NBA and USA basketball team were not as dominant as they

used to have been. I had eventually realized that European teams such as Spain and Argentina

had started to become competent with the USA basketball team. This was made clear through the

games that had taken place in the FIBA World Cup, which is the basketball world cup. The

biggest reason as to why I actually became interested in how the increase in competition for the

Euro League had occurred was when Luka Doncic started to make an impact in the NBA. There

were notable European basketball stars in the NBA way before Doncic’s time such as Dirk

Nowitzki and Peja Stojakovic, but they were old players. I was unable to watch them when those

players were in their respective primes, because I had not been born at the time. My junior year

of high school was exactly when Luka Doncic had been drafted and was playing his first season

in the NBA with the Dallas Mavericks. He had made such a huge impact that he made the

Mavericks go from a developing team the previous season to a playoff contending team in his

first season. As I went on to research his history, I came across how his first experience with

professional basketball was Euro League basketball which eventually had me hooked onto how

the competition in the Euro League had grown to make the players competent in the NBA. This

eventually made me realize that the competition in the Euro League is growing to be as

competitive and equivalent to the competition involved in the NBA. The idea of the factors that

are responsible for the drastic increase in competition in the Euro League will be the main topic

of my research paper.
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Extensive research explored on this topic will help demonstrate the factors responsible for such

change. Professional research analysts and sports analysts have a lot to say about this

unprecedented change in professional competitive basketball and changes made in the Euro

League will be explored to have a sense or an idea on how this change was made possible.

Literature Review

Ian Begley is a renowned sports analyst that works for ‘ABC NEWS’. This scholarly

article written by him should be deemed as credible, because it has been reviewed by others that

work for the sports section in ‘ABC NEWS’ and Ian Begley included personal quotes from

Kristaps Porzingis to describe some experiences and support some of the claims that Begley was

going to include in this article. The article basically talks about Kristaps Porzingis journey to the

NBA starting from when he was a little kid attending school. Begley seemed to have dived deep

into this topic, because he went on to include a lot of personal quotes from Porzingis describing

these life experiences, which gives the information included in the article a sense of accuracy and

the feelings will be accurately captured. The information involved in this article is relevant to my

research paper and will be helpful, because it can help the paper support claims about Porzingis

with the quotes that the author has incorporated into the article and it will give my research less

bias.

The authors that have published the “Best of the Decade: Off-Court Advances” 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’.
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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.

There are many authors that have published the scholarly article of “Euroleague

Basketball’s Great Leaps Forward”, 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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The people who have come together to film an online video titled “Luka’s Journey to

NBA Superstardom” are not mentioned name by name anywhere as they are all considered to be

under the same organization and channel, ESPN. However, this video shall be deemed as

credible, because it has been reviewed by various sources that include professional editors and

includes people giving a voiceover and assurance to the facts that have been researched and

collected by the team that put the video together. The video consists of a good in-depth

discussion of Luka Doncic’s journey to the NBA and his journey to achieving superstardom

status in the NBA, which cannot be achieved by everyone so easily. The information provided in

this source will be relevant to my research paper, because it can help me talk about how the Euro

League influenced and developed Luka into a competent player for the NBA, which further

implies the point of how the Euro League is successful in developing basketball players to reach

the NBA level of professional basketball.

The authors in the scholarly article titled “Euroleague Basketball Competitions

Experience Huge Growth under New Structure” 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
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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.

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 in 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

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.

Although it is noted that the National Basketball Association has published the page of

Kristaps Porzingis’ stats, 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 updated 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
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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 leagues will be crucial in developing a comparison about the

difficulty of competition in both leagues.

Sean Lahman is renowned on the website dealing with international stats, because 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 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.

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 that deals with international statistics.

As mentioned before, the date listed in 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
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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.

The authors that have published the page of Luka Doncic’s NBA stats 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.

Radivoj Mandić and the authors of the academic journal titled “Trends in NBA and Euro

league Basketball: Analysis and Comparison of Statistical Data from 2000 to 2017” 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
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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.

The scholarly article titled “The Progress Card of 10 European NBA Draft Prospects” 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 such prospects help conveys

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.

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When I had first decided that I was going to full dive into this topic and uncover the

reasons behind the cause of such a trend in professional basketball, I had realized that it would

not be possible to perform an experiment or survey type of thing on my own. Therefore, I

decided that the only way to make sure the research paper for this topic is thoroughly explored is

by researching various sources and interpreting their information in a way that would be useful

for supporting the ideas in my paper. Two research methods that I had decided I was analyzing

are case studies and rhetorical analysis. Rhetorical analysis will help me explain why this

happened and it will help me identify the key components or aspects of basketball that have

helped the Euro League increase its difficulty of competition. In a way, rhetorical analysis will

be the key to 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. It will make the paper easier to follow and it would help the viewers to

not be left confused. There are many sources that analyze the change in competition of basketball

in the Euro League and NBA over the past decade and those will be vital for supporting the

claims being made in this paper. The statistics of individual players that have played in the Euro

League and NBA will be compared, so it will be helpful in analyzing how the difference in

competition in both professional basketball leagues had impacted the performances of the player

in the respective leagues.

Methods/Results

Discussion/Implications
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Works Cited Page