Notes on Berke Büyüktuncel’s Offence

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Berke Büyüktuncel is an 18-year-old combo forward playing for Tofaş. 22-23 isn’t his first season as a pro, but it’s the first season in which he’s been a full-time pro. He hasn’t participated with Tofaş’s youth academy since the beginning of this season. Büyüktuncel has intriguing potential and his floor level is high enough that he can register consistent and plenty of minutes for a team on the calibre of Tofaş. He’s averaging almost 18 minutes of playing time in 22 appearances in the Turkish top flight, missing a few early season matches to a wrist injury. In Europe, he averaged nearly 23 mins of playing time in 5 apps over at FIBA’s Basketball Champions League. He is adjusting to a high level basketball, but he’s already a very capable forward defender, strong at multiple aspects of defence. He is a better, more productive player on defence than on attack. And this isn’t a symptom of his first full-time professional season, that has been Berke Büyüktuncel’s game at youth levels as well. There’s not that much room for growth for his defending. Given his age and inexperience, he’s having nothing short of a special defensive season with Tofaş. His offence though, there is more to that story… Let’s talk about it.

The Driving Seat and Its Burdens

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This text was written for a video commentary, and this piece should have been published in video format. Following issues with the rendering, and the video not looking to be ready for publishing before the semi-finals, I scrapped the video format and chose to publish the text while adding a minority of the clips from the video. It was a back-up plan but also a last minute change and thus this text of the video commentary might lack the coherence of a written piece, as it is only the script text for a 20+ minute video commentary.

For the second season in a row, Barcelona finished the EuroLeague regular season as the 1st seed, matched up with the 8th seed in the quarter-finals and got unexpectedly pushed to the series deciding match at home court and prevailed in the elimination match to grab a Final Four spot. At mid-point of the regular season, I wrote that this Barcelona team was not all that similar to previous season’s Barça and unlike the previous season, they would have to be named as the clear title favourite by then the mid-point of the EuroLeague regular season. So if Barcelona solved their offensive issues from previous years in this season, why were they so pushed by an injury depleted Bayern in quarter-finals this time around?

Peculiarity of Turkish Basketball Clubs In Light of Bursaspor’s Historic Day

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Bursaspor has made a lot of headlines following their success in EuroCup knock-out round, taking out favourites one at a time, away from home, facing big crowds as the underdogs. They’ve unexpectedly made their way to the 2022 EuroCup Final, to face Virtus Bologna tonight, where once again the crocodiles will be the underdogs, facing a team which has been a EuroCup title contender from day one of this season, and once again they’ll face a passionate crowd, hungry for a EuroLeague berth after so many years.

Crossroads

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With the conclusion of the 21-22 EuroLeague Regular Season, and more than half the teams already eliminated out of competition, reports have started to emerge regarding the payments EL clubs are about to receive. Mozzart Sport has come up with a list of how much all 18 clubs are bound to receive from the regular season, reported by Djordje Matic. That includes their revenues from EuroLeague’s market pool and competition bonuses both.

Euroleague Basketball, or ECA (Euroleague Commercial Assets), the governing body of EuroLeague and EuroCup, suspending Russian clubs this season as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, makes this current season’s financial distribution way more complicated than it usually is. In sporting terms, the controversial decision to remove all the played and to-be-played results involving Russian clubs is already finalised. However the financial consequences of this decision is apparently not yet certain. Per Mozzart Sport’s aforementioned reporting, whether and how to distribute the money involving the matches against the three Russian clubs is not yet determined and the total sum of money at play in this regard is 3.552.000 euros.

How Are EuroLeague Payments Back To Clubs Structured?

One of the biggest misconceptions regarding how and what type of money EuroLeague teams in any given season receive, is the myth that the champion only earns a million euros from the competition. This myth stems from the fact that EuroLeague’s championship bonus is actually a million euros, however the champion team already receives money before that. With the omission of the latter, it is often made seem like the competition rewards their champion team with just a million euros.