By John Rammas/ irammas@eurohoops.net
After changing the format of the competition last year, interest in most games abounds and the EuroLeague is becoming more and more exciting.
Condensing the two phases before the playoffs into one and creating a regular season of 30 rounds, sometimes with more than one over 48 hours, in which all teams play with all the others, have already made the EuroLeague even more interesting and the venture is becoming more and more successful.
In the 2015-16 season, the last one with a regular season and a Top 16 before the playoffs, the percentage of games in the first two phases with a margin of a single possession (1p.-3p.) was just 13%, while least season (2016-17), the change in the way the league is conducted brought a 5% increase (18% in a total of 240 games). Following this, 34,6% of games had a margin of up to 5 points and 62,9% a one-digit margin.
This season, with almost a third of the games already behind us (72 out of 240), thrilling games also abound.
20,8% of games have a margin of up to 3 points and 33,3% up to 5 points.
Just in the previous round, 3 games were decided literally at the last moment. In Olympiacos’s win over Armani Milan (85-86) in the Mediolanum Forum, Curtis Jerrells missed a three at the expiration; Bamberg came back from a 16-point deficit against Valencia in the brose ARENA, with Ricky Hickman making the score 83-82 2,1 seconds before the end and Fernando San Emeterio not able to respond from behind the 6,75m. line; Panathinaikos did the same thing (from a 16-point deficit) against Real Madrid (82-80) at the Olympic Sports Center Athens, with James Gist – with 15,5 seconds on the clock – shaping what turned out to be the final score, since Trey Thompkins’ missed a three-pointer at the expiration.
Here are the wins of each team in games decided by a small margin.
EUROLEAGUE 2017-18
| TEAMS | DECIDED BY 3 POINTS OR LESS | DECIDED BY 5 POINTS OR LESS |
| CSKA Moscow |
1-1 |
1-1 |
| Olympiacos Piraeus | 2-0 |
3-0 |
| Fenerbahce Dogus | 1-2 |
2-2 |
| Panathinaikos Superfoods | 3-1 |
3-1 |
| Real Madrid | 0-1 | 0-1 |
| Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv | 0-2 | 0-2 |
| Zalgiris Kaunas |
2-1 |
2-1 |
| Khimki Moscow Region | 1-0 |
2-1 |
| Bamberg Baskets | 2-0 |
3-0 |
| FC Barcelona Lassa | 0-1 | 0-3 |
| Baskonia Vitoria Gasteiz | 1-1 |
2-1 |
| Valencia Basket | 0-1 | 0-3 |
| AX Armani Exchange Olimpia Milan | 0-1 |
2-1 |
| Unicaja Malaga | 1-1 |
2-3 |
| Anadolu Efes Istanbul | 0-1 |
1-2 |
| Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade | 1-1 |
1-2 |