How Good Are The Overseas Leagues of Draft Prospects LaMelo, Deni and Killian?

Are LaMelo Ball, Deni Avdija and Killian Hayes playing the equivalent competition of the NCAA? G-League? U.S. high school ball?

Oct 26, 2020

For detailed scouting reports of the draft’s prospects, see our extensive past coverage.

How Good Are Overseas Leagues?

I’m ramping up to do another round of Beat The Draft for Deni Avdija and possibly LaMelo Ball. To do this, I will need to anonymize the overseas leagues by giving you the approximate strength of the competition.

This is important to do anyway, since each year we seem to have more and more NBA prospects coming from overseas leagues instead of from American colleges.

So we have the basic question of how much stock to put in, say, LaMelo Ball’s Australian National Basketball League. Is it like the NBA? The NCAA? US high school ball? This article will give you rough tiers to give context to their amazing (or unamazing) stats.

Mike Schmitz @Mike_Schmitz

Who is Deni Avdija? Get to know the draft's most versatile prospect by watching our ESPN Film Session filmed in Tel Aviv in February. Avdija has very few holes in his game on both ends & is one of the draft's more experienced prospects at only 19 years old youtu.be/wM2muYg5OBE

The Overseas League Tier List

Let’s cut to the chase and give you my answers, and then justify this afterwards.

Here are the world’s leagues in rough tiers, ranked by how performance translates to the NBA.

NBA
Olympics
Elite Level: Euroleague, Spanish Liga ACB, FIBA World Cup
G-League Level: Russian VTB, Turkish BSL, Italian Serie A, Eurocup
Top NCAA Level: Australian NBL, French LNB Pro A, German BBL, Adriatic League
Mid NCAA Level: Israeli BSL, Baltic League BBL Elite, Greek A1
Low NCAA Level: Lithuanian LKL, Canadian NBL, Ukrainian Superleague, Cypriot Division A, Serbian KLS, Chinese CBA
Sub NCAA Level: Every other league.

You may not agree with these tiers. That’s fine. I explain my sources below.

Where The Big Prospects Played

Here is every overseas prospect (that I’ve seen ranked in anybody’s Top 100) and where they played. I added a couple of notes from friend of the site Evan Z. (See the stupendous podcast he did with Dubs and Daniel).

Elite Level

Deni Avdija* F Maccabi Tel Aviv, EuroLeague (*also Mid NCAA below)
Leandro Bolmaro F Barcelona, Spanish Liga ACB
Theo Maledon* G ASVEL, EuroLeague (*also Top NCAA below)
Arturs Zagars PG Joventut Badalona, Spanish Liga ACB

G-League Level

Paul Eboua F Victoria Libertas Pesaro, Italian Serie A

Top NCAA Level

LaMelo Ball G Illawarra Hawks, Australian NBL
R.J. Hampton G New Zealand Breakers, Australian NBL
Killian Hayes G Ulm, German BBL
Theo Maledon* G ASVEL, French LNB Pro A (*also Elite above)
Abdoulaye N’Doye G/W AS Monaco, French LNB Pro A

Mid NCAA Level

Deni Avdija* F Maccabi Tel Aviv, Israeli BSL (*also Elite Level above)
Yam Madar G Hapoel Tel Aviv, Israeli BSL

Low NCAA Level

Malcolm Cazalon SG Mega Soccerbet, Serbian KLS
Marko Simonovic C Mega Bemax, Serbian KLS
Rokas Jokubaitis G Zalgiris Kaunas, Lithuanian LKL

Sub NCAA Level

Aleksej Pokusevski C Olympiacos B, Greek 2nd Level

Some Notable Comments

Evan Zamir @thecity2

@LetsGoWarriors @EricApricot Pretty sure from everything I've heard the Greek A2 is better than high school level.

Evan Zamir @thecity2

@EricApricot @LetsGoWarriors I think more like mid-NCAA is what I've surmised.

LukaWasMineFirst @NEtauri

@EricApricot @LetsGoWarriors It is hard and subjective; but for guys like Maledon, Avdija etc. to play/train in structured, professional teams against the likes of Larkin, Pargo, Acy etc., I would put it on top NCAA level. Top NCAA teams have an athleticism edge, though.

LukaWasMineFirst @NEtauri

@EricApricot @LetsGoWarriors But how many games do the top athletes from big programs go up against equal competition? The discrepancy in quality in the NCAA is much bigger than in European leagues.

Ranking The Overseas Leagues

I am not an expert at international basketball! The way I made these tiers is by consulting two rankings of leagues abroad:

First, Fran Fraschilla (2017) uses his experience to rank these leagues:

EuroLeague
Spain's Liga ACB
Turkish Basketball Super League (BSL)
Russia's VTB United League
Germany's Basketball Bundesliga (BBL)
Italy's Lega Basket Serie A (LBA)
France's LNB Pro A
Adriatic League (ABA)
Greek A1 League
Australia's National Basketball League (NBL)
Lithuania's LKL
Chinese Basketball Association (CBA)

Second, Layne Vashro (2016) did a fascinatingly detailed look at projecting NBA performance from international competition performance. Here is a rough tiering of the above leagues (higher measure = higher predicted NBA translated numbers):

3.8: NBA Playoffs
3.0-3.3: NBA, Team USA Exhibitions
2.5: Olympic Games
1.9-1.5: FIBA World Cup, Euroleague, Spanish Liga ACB
1.3-1.1: NBA D-League, old Russian PBL, Italian Serie A
1.0-0.87: Pac-10 NCAA, Eurocup, Russian VTB United
0.82-0.75: ACC NCAA, Australian NBL, Turkish BSL, Adriatic League
0.70-0.65: SEC NCAA, French LNB Pro A, German BBL
0.56-0.40: PAC-12, Big 12 NCAA, Big 10 NCAA, Israeli BSL, Baltic League BBL Elite, FIBA Africa, Greek A1
0.15-0.30: MWC, WAC, WCC, A10, SunBelt, AAC NCAA. Lithuanian LKL, Canadian NBL, Ukrainian Superleague, Cypriot Division A, Serbian KLS
Notable Below: Chinese CBA (-0.04), New Zealand NBL (-1.04)