By Lefteris Moutis/ moutis@eurohoops.net
When Euroleague announced a year ago that Top 16 would expand and the games will be held Thursdays and Fridays and not Wednesdays and Thursdays most of the people thought that the Euroleague teams would start to collapse in the championship games due to the tiredness. The majority of the domestic leagues decided to add Mondays to the calendar; exactly, all of them apart from the Spanish.
After 20 games in the Euroleague and 24 in Liga Endesa it’s interesting to discover if it’s indeed worthy all this “war” between Euroleague and Liga Endesa.
So, as the results of Barcelona, Real, Unicaja and Caja Laboral show, Spaniards could disagree with Friday’s games for marketing reasons or anything else. But not cause the tiredness that could have the players after a Euroleague game in less than 48 hours in an extremely competitive championship.
Unicaja,Barcelonaand Real Madrid have bigger winning percentage after a Euroleague game on Friday in comparison with their total winning record. The only team that has worse results is Caja Laboral. But this isn’t something weird because the journey to and fromVitoriais always hard for opponents and Basques themselves.
Something important also, about it has to do with the number of the games that every team has played on Friday. Barcelona is the “privileged” team having played so far only four Euroleague games on Friday.
Winning record in the championship after a Friday’s Euroleague game
| Team | Friday’s winning record | Total record |
| Unicaja | 5-2 (71%) | 12-12 (50%) |
| Barcelona | 3-1 (75%) | 15-9 (62%) |
| Real Μ. | 8-0 (100%) | 23-1 (95%) |
| Caja Laboral | 8-3 (72%) | 19-5 (79%) |
| Total | 24-6 (80%) | 69-27 (71%) |