Round 1

Welcome to our Eurocup Fantasy Basketball blog for the 2026/27 season. We are very excited to present you with our revamped selection process. Each week, we’ll be breaking down our picks so we hope we can assist fantasy players everywhere. Enjoy the read and hope you stick around throughout the season - let's enjoy together!

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We then searched for anchor players who could help us as potential captains. We cannot overlook Cedi OSMAN (15 CR) from PAOK. OSMAN is probably the superstar of this year’s tournament, and so far he appears to be the undisputed leader of his team. He is playing around 30 minutes per game, taking a high volume of shots while contributing in many aspects of the game. Moreover, his ability to attack the basket leads to him drawing a lot of fouls, which should help his PIR. We just hope he is not too tired after the two intense games he played in the Greek Super Cup.

Next to him, we selected Keenan EVANS (12.2 CR). EVANS was considered an EuroLeague superstar before back-to-back injuries kept him out of action for almost two years. This season, with London Lions, he is playing approximately 20 minutes per game, but his PIR has been consistently decent. We believe his quality will allow him to produce a performance around 20 PIR and that we can easily gain some credits from him.

We then scanned the market for players who appear to be important parts of their teams but whose value remains below 10 credits. Basically, we are trying to identify underrated players who could increase their value quickly. After looking at a large number of options, we ended up with the following:

• Michael RATAJ (7.0 CR). RATAJ is one of the best players on his team, a starter who plays approximately 30 minutes and contributes in almost every statistical category. The only drawback is his team, Ulm, which can be extremely unpredictable and is capable of producing both the best and the worst performances.

• Tyler WAHL (9.5 CR). WAHL is also one of the leaders of his team, Riga Zelli. He was impressive during the preseason and appears to be the dominant Center of his team. We have some concerns about the overall potential of his team, but we believe that WAHL should still be able to produce a PIR above his current value.

• Ognjen JARAMAZ (9.0 CR). The Serbian star is the new playmaker of Lietkabelis, and his start to the season has been quite encouraging. He is playing approximately 25 minutes, scoring regularly, and his team is facing what appears to be a weaker opponent.

• Melvin AJINCA (8.5 CR). AJINCA has EuroLeague experience and is now the leading Point Guard on his new team. So far, he has consistently recorded performances above 15 PIR. There is a difficult game ahead of him against Aris this week, but we believe his experience could prove valuable for his team.

• Nathan SOLIMAN (5.0 CR). The new prodigy kid! The 17-year-old Forward is already a starter for last year’s winner, and we cannot wait to see him in action. His last two games were particularly impressive, while his value is so low that the risk is minimal.

We then had three remaining positions to fill. At the same time, most of our selected players are playing in Turn 2, so we tried to balance the roster and give ourselves maximum flexibility to cover any wrong guesses.

Starting with the second Center position, we wanted a strong candidate who plays in Turn 1 and could potentially produce a score good enough to remain in the lineup rather than being replaced by the less experienced WAHL (9.5 CR). We selected Martynas ECHODAS (10 CR), as the Lithuanian teams appear to be more prepared at this stage of the season, and he is clearly the starting Center for Neptunas. His home game against Trento looks like a good opportunity to produce a high PIR.

With our remaining budget, and after trying many different combinations, we ended up with Swann PENDA (4.2 CR), who has a role in his team and has been producing PIR above his current value, and Shake MILTON (12.5 CR). The remaining budget allowed us to add a top-class Guard, and MILTON is certainly a charismatic scorer. His team is one of the favorites in this year’s tournament and has plenty of quality Guards, such as Jaleen SMITH and Lorenzo BROWN, but we believe that MILTON will be the first option in his team’s offense.

Unfortunately, we were not able to select ROBINSON-EARL from Aris, who could have been a potential Turn 1 captain. We were simply seduced by the other three options (OSMAN, RATAJ and SOLIMAN), and by the time we considered him, we no longer had enough budget. He will definitely remain on our radar, along with plenty of other players we did not include in this Round. Martynas PACEVICIOUS (7.7 CR), Ethan Burg (7.0 CR), Elva Mar Fridriksson (9.6 CR), Stefan SMITH (9.6 CR) and many others — we will keep an eye on you.

The captain of our team will be ECHODAS for Turn 1 and, if his performance is below 20 PIR, we will switch to OSMAN.

The first Round is always about finding the right balance between performance and budget growth. We have selected a mix of established stars, promising newcomers and undervalued players who could increase their value quickly. Our main objective is to start building our budget while keeping enough flexibility to react once we have more information about the teams and players. Let’s see if our first choices can give us the strong start we missed last year — and hopefully avoid another 12,000-place comeback story!

Round 1:

     WELCOME BACK FRIENDS! The first Round of EuroCup is about to begin this week with a new format that significantly affects our fantasy game. The number of teams has increased from 20 to 32, with four groups of eight teams in the regular season. Needless to say, the pool of available players has also increased substantially. As this is the beginning of the season, we do not have much data at our disposal regarding the strength of each team and their strategies. However, we still remember our catastrophic start last year, which eventually turned into a beautiful journey and saw our team finish 95th in the global ranking. As always, at least at the beginning of the season, our main goal is to increase our budget.

Before presenting our selections, we have to mention the absolute protagonist of EuroCup Fantasy over the last two years: our beloved Jared HARPER. Unfortunately, he was injured during the summer and will be out at least until late November. We wish him a speedy recovery and hope to see him back on the court soon. And, of course, he will always have a place in our team.

So, let’s get back to our team and our selections. We will start with the coach. Instead of selecting a coach from the top tier, we decided to go for a relatively cheap option. Our idea is to take advantage of the very different levels of the teams participating in this year’s tournament. There are some extremely strong teams with impressive rosters, such as Bahcesehir, Hapoel Jerusalem and the Greek teams (Aris, PAOK), but at the same time, there are last-minute additions such as Bosna and BK Balkan. No offence intended, but in our eyes, the difference between some of these teams is enormous. That is why, for the first Round, we will select the coach of Lietkabelis, Nemad CANAK (6.5 CR). Lietkabelis is a traditional EuroCup team, the Lithuanian championship has already started, and if the team wants to have a chance of reaching the next phase of the tournament, they need to win against Bosna.

These fantasy picks are for entertainment only. No crystal balls, no insider info—just our best guesses. Sometimes we’ll look like geniuses; other times, like we drafted blindfolded. Trust your own instincts, play for fun, laugh at the misses, and celebrate the wins!

Signed: Mid-range Maven

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