EuroLeague double weeks: Are they that bad and which teams are the best? / News - Basketnews.com

EuroLeague introduced double weeks in 2016. We performed an analysis of how Euroleague teams did both during the double weeks and, most importantly, immediately after them in the local leagues.

Credit: Panagiotis Moschandreou/GettyImages, Vangelis Stolis, D. Lukšta Credit Panagiotis Moschandreou/GettyImages, Vangelis Stolis, D. Lukšta

With the introduction of a new format in 2016, the EuroLeague introduced a new concept to the calendar - double weeks. With it came a unique challenge for the club - dealing with more games in the same amount of time as before.

The 2016-17 EuroLeague season started with 16 teams in the tournament and five double weeks. As the years went by, the number of teams increased to 18. Additionally, the number of double weeks in a single season increased as well, regardless of how many teams competed in the EuroLeague.

In 2019, two more teams were introduced into the competition, increasing the double-week count to seven. This season, due to the EuroLeague's agreement with FIBA regarding national team windows, the number ballooned to eight.

The postseason introduces an additional challenge for the top eight teams - two more 'double weeks' in the playoffs while fighting for the Final Four.

A total of 28 different teams have participated in the EuroLeague so far. The question now remains - how well did they do during the double weeks? And most importantly - how did the teams do in the local leagues immediately after the two straight games in the EuroLeague?

Methodology

The methodology is quite straightforward. After collecting the data of every single double-week game in the EuroLeague, two main factors were used in the entire dataset - win/loss and the result against the spread.

Against the spread (ATS) is a term often used in sports betting. It denotes how well a team does in certain situations against the point spread the bookmakers choose for the team's game.

Shortly, a point spread is a value which shows how close the game should be according to various calculations and pre-determined variables the bookmakers use. There can be a negative and a positive point spread. If it's negative, it means the team is favored to win; if it's positive, the team is thought to be the underdog and positioned to lose the matchup.

The point spread also tells how close the game is thought to be by the bookmakers. For example, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid play in the El Clasico and the point spread is 5.5. The favorite's handicap (another term for point spread) will be -5.5, while the underdog's handicap will be +5.5.

If the favorite wins by more than 5.5 points, the team will have covered the spread. At the same time, if the underdog loses by less than 5.5 points, they will also have covered the spread, and vice versa.

There are thousands of sports bookmakers worldwide. However, OddsPortal is one widely available database that collects real-time odds from a multitude of sports betting companies.

Using OddsPortal, the most equal point spread was chosen for the dataset. If there are two options that have equally many bookmakers offering the value, the one that the biggest sports betting company in the world, Bet365, offered was the one chosen. For example, if handicaps of 5.5 and 4.5 are offered by 8 bookmakers each, the one that Bet365 offered at the time was chosen.

As such, the handicap option was picked for every EuroLeague and every local league game in double weeks. Naturally, the spread should be covered at around a 50% rate the more games are added into the sample. However, some teams are considerably better or considerably worse against the spread (ATS) than the median.

Additionally, the discrepancy between home and away games after EuroLeague double weeks was looked at, determining whether the difference in where the EuroLeague team plays makes a notable difference in said team's results in the local leagues.

One factor, though, is unquantifiable - injuries. Playing more games more often increases the probability of an injury. Calculating injury data after double weeks is highly improbable due to the lack of information the teams provide about the origin of the injuries their players pick up. As such, this data point will remain unexplored in this article.

Who Wins The Most?

Firstly, let's take a look at the most basic stat there is - win percentage. Here, one team stands head and shoulders above the rest.

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