Home

By: Freaknick

I’ll be the first to admit it: Euroleague ‘top plays’ are usually a bit bland. For starters, it’s a simpler game than the NBA. Well, at least simpler as in “John Wooden would be proud.” To a basketball purist-whatever that is-it’s far more complex. Set plays, off-ball screens and zone defenses. The lack of isolation play and the rotating defenses don’t lend themselves to running starts or empty paths to the basket. As a result the dunks are pretty vanilla and a single night on SportsCenter might yield more excitement than an entire regular season of Euroleague play. Also, 82 games is a lot more than the 13-14 an average Euroleague team plays (23 is the absolute maximum, 10 the absolute minimum excluding the qualifying round), so opportunities are scarce as well.

Well, then I saw these, and here’s what I thought:

#5 - For starters, Daniel Ewing is my boy (former Blue Devil. You understand). While the dunk is nothing overly spectacular, this highlight is about the whole play. He runs about 85 feet with the pellet before faking Milos Teodosic out of his loosely laced shoes. Watch it again. Milos does a 360 before watching Ewing flush it.

#4 - Might I remind you that Fran Vazquez is 7 feet tall? Goodness. If your wingspan is nearly 9 feet you shouldn’t be allowed to jump, because that’s when feelings get hurt.

#3 - So like, this video makes me feel as though Jan Jagla thought he had a chance. Shame.

#2 - How much more baller is it to posterize somebody with tow hands? And to do it on the best big man in Europe? That’s why Holy Khryapa is my favorite player. I love you too, Tiago, but damn…

#1 - If ESPN doesn’t air this replay 20 times on Draft Day then I owe each and every one of you a shiny Euro which would really eat away at our budget.