Round 4 of the BKT EuroCup was highlighted by a reckoning at the top of both Groups A and B as the herd of teams undefeated was thinned to only three.
The impacts of starters - and reserves - so far this season
Stats
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In Group A, Paris Basketball defeated the previously unbeaten London Lions in an overtime shootout that saw one of the largest contrasts in starter and bench production in recent history. While London’s starters outscored Paris's 81 to 55, Paris’s bench closed the gap outscoring London’s reserves 51-21 to earn a narrow victory.
Those gaps in production have been the norm for these teams so far this season. As the graph above suggests, Paris’s starters have only played 50 more minutes than their bench to this point while London has played its starters over 70% of the time - comfortably the highest rate in the EuroCup even without having key contributor Sam Dekker active for two of their four games. Few teams in recent history have played their starters over 68% of the time, but London has set that course while looking like one of the better teams in Group A.
In contrast, Paris’s reserves have outscored their opponents' second-stringers by 118 - a truly remarkable number that tells the story of their 4-0 start.
In Group B, Dreamland Gran Canaria took control of the top spot in the standings with a win over Mincidelice JL Bourg en Bresse. Splitting their minutes almost right down the middle between their starters and their reserves, Gran Canaria has been this season’s outlier, leveraging its depth more than any other team to get its repeat bid off to a fast start. The starters have played a EuroCup-low 49% of the team's minutes so far this season - not far below the 54% pace they set during their run to the EuroCup championship last season.
Among other superlatives, this season’s only other undefeated team, Hapoel Shlomo Tel Aviv, has watched its starters outscore those of its opponents by a league-best 73 points in only three games. While it is still very early, the contrast between when and how successfully this year’s top teams are rotating their subs has been an interesting footnote. What kind of impact those tendencies ultimately have on the standings and what kind of adjustments these teams make as the year wears on are worth monitoring.