@Black Urum: Thanks for moving it over.
Red Star/Hemofarm debate
The big question is whether or not Euroleague assigns this spot to the finalist [Red Star], or whether it respects the domestic Serbian Euro ranking, a three year ranking which includes results from the different competitions the teams participate in. In many other countries that had domestic rankings, they don't play a role for Eurolague qualification anymore. There hasn't been official confirmation on this topic yet [on the other hand, there hasn't been official confirmation on a lot of topics, e.g. the ASVEL wildcard], but in some conversations I had it became pretty clear that the domestic ranking will be in effect and hence this spot should be assigned to the 2nd placed team in the ranking, which everybody says is Hemofarm. However, if nobody pulls out, none of the two will participate, according to my calculations. I'll come to that now.
General stuff
As you all know, we have 13 teams with three year A-licences. Those are set.
Maccabi
CSKA
Panathinaikos
Olympiacos
Zalgiris
Efes
Fenerbahce
Siena
Roma
Real
Barcelona
Unicaja
TAU
Then there's the C-licence for the EuroCup winner, a one year direct qualification spot. Now Rytas won the EuroCup, and they're LKL champ too. In their press release from a few months ago, Euroleague addressed this case:
Quote:The Eurocup champion would retain the current prize for winning that competition, namely a one-year C Licence. If a team qualifies as Eurocup champion and later wins its national championship, the team would go to the Euroleague as national champion and the Eurocup C Licence would become a wild card.
Source: [url="http://www.euroleague.net/news/i/44611/180/item"]Euroleague.net[/url]
The wildcard is probably going to be a direct qualification spot, as it is a normal C-licence, the substitute for the EuroCup winner. But we cannot say for sure yet. However, this makes it 14 teams. By the way, I think ALBA Berlin has a good shot at getting this wildcard, if they crash out of the German playoffs tomorrow in Bonn. Bertomeu likes Berlin.
The next step is the B-Licence ranking system, which assigns 8 direct qualification spots, and another 7 for the qualifying rounds. This makes it 22 direct qualification spots and 7 spots in the qualifying rounds. The one remaining spot will be given to a French team, according to Bertomeu's statements in French newspaper "L'equipe" [in case you don't know it, it's a huge, almost legendary daily sportspaper with excellent reputation]. You can read Ballineurope's comments on this article [url="http://www.ballineurope.com/european-basketball/euroleague/three-french-euroleague-teams-in-20092010/"]here[/url]. This French team would be ASVEL Villeurbanne, in case they didn't qualify through one of the two regular French spots.
Nature of the B-licence ranking
Euroleague [url="http://www.euroleague.net/news/i/50133/180/item"]recently made this official[/url], but I think how they did it was a bit confusing.
I installed a [url="http://www.in-the-game.org/?page_id=3129"]ranking table on my site[/url]. The rules are pretty simple: You start at spot 1, then go down step by step. The first eight spots are for direct qualification. The next seven are for the qualifying round. The key thing is that when the respective spot is already taken by a team that has an A-licence, not another team from that country gets the spot, but rather the next country in the ranking. So e.g. there will definitely be an A-licence team on first, second, and third spot in Spain, Barca, TAU and Unicaja. So no additional Spanish team. For that to happen, Pamesa or Joventut or anyone else would have to finish 3rd or higher. If you apply this to all the spots, the result is the following:
I. 13 A-licence plus 1 C-licences
II. 8 direct B-licence qualificants through the ranking system:
French Champion
Rytas
Partizan
Cibona
Olimpija
German Champion
Prokom
AJ Milano [they'll be directly qualified even if they lose the final series. If you looked at the ranking on my page, one the two Italian top spot will be cancelled because Siena is an A-licence team. So if Milano loses, that means Siena wins the championship, and the 1st Italian spot will be cancelled because Siena is an A-licence team. Hence all the other spot below the first Italian spot, including the 2nd Italian spot, will move one up.
III. 7 spots for the qualification round
Khimki
ASVEL [in France not the Finalist gets the 2nd B-licence, but the regular season winner, as Ballineurope reported. That is an exception]
Benetton
Maroussi
Charleroi
Ventspils
Azovmash
Plus the wildcard for a French team. Usually ASVEL, but they already qualified through the 2nd B-licence. It doesn't really matter though, as both spots start in the qualification round.
I'm not sure why some calculations include Red Star, maybe they didn't include the wildcard. I would like to hear what these calculation are based on. Fact is, the 2nd Serbian team would be next in the ranking, so they are falling one spot short, according to my calculation.