Kauhajoki Karhubasket has made a splash this season with its hard wins on European courts. A bigger loss has only come on Wednesday night, when Poland’s Wloclawek won by 19 points in the FIBA Europe Cup semi-final opener.
How hard is the performance when Karhubasket is fighting for the final place in basketball’s FIBA Europe Cup?
At the beginning, it must be stated that it is difficult to measure the achievement and the sport itself is partly to blame for that.
Disputes between major European clubs and the International Basketball Association have stirred things up. (you switch to another service)European basketball team competitions have changed their shape several times and that makes comparison difficult.
However, let’s start from the basic scale.
The current FIBA Europe Cup is the fourth largest European club team competition. It is preceded by Euroleague, Eurocup and Champions League.
The first two of these are run by the Euroleague commercial company (ECA), so in practice the major European clubs are behind it. The latter two, the Champions League and the FIBA Europe Cup, are under the jurisdiction of the international basketball association FIBA. In some estimates, the Champions League has risen to a better level this season after the Eurocup.
Karhubasket also participated in the Champions League qualifiers this season, but fell to Slovakia’s Levice. However, Karhubasket, which was still unfinished at the time of the qualifiers, later beat Levice in the FIBA Europe Cup.
Euroleague (18 teams)
Eurocup (20 teams)
Champions League (32 teams)
FIBA Europe Cup (32 teams)
The top two are the series managed by the Euroleague, the bottom two are the FIBA series of the International Basketball Federation.
A rare delicacy in Finnish terms
What kind of clubs has Karhubasket brought down this year? In which club are they fighting for the championship?
Here is a list of Kauhajoki’s scalps this season: Hungarian league eighth Körmend, Polish league ninth Wloclavek, Portuguese league second Sporting Lisbon and third Porto, Israeli league eighth Hapoel Haifa, Ukrainian league first Budiveljnyk and Slovak league third Levice.
Now, in addition to Karhu and Wloclavek, BC Kalev from Estonia and Cholet from France have made it to the top four. Kalev from Estonia surprised his French opponent, who suffered from injuries, in the second semi-final on Wednesday.
However, if you compare the top four teams, Cholet is in a class of its own. The budget of the current top three of the French league is more than five million euros and salary expenses are 1.7 million euros. (you switch to another service)
Karhubasket’s budget is 1.158 million euros, of which the salary budget is 695,000 euros.
The budget of Kalevi, second in the Estonian-Latvian league is, like Karhu, in the category of a million euros (you switch to another service). Budget data for Poland’s Wloclawek has not been publicly available, but according to media reports, a few seasons ago it was around 1.5 million euros. (you switch to another service)
Karhu has therefore faced and won mostly against good teams in the middle level of Europe.
However, Karhubasket’s performance should not be underestimated under any circumstances.
Cholet’s example already shows that, compared to Finland, teams that operate with really hard resources play in the tournament.
The hierarchy of European national leagues goes so that Spain and Turkey are number one. Behind these in the next category are France, Germany and Italy and Greece.
Bearbasket has indeed left a lot of these top leagues behind. For example, the tournament of all three German Bundesliga teams that participated in the FIBA Europe Cup, Bamberg, Chemnitz and Craislheim, finished before the Finnish team.
The teams of the German Bundesliga provide an excellent comparison point for Karhu’s performance. All these German teams have a budget of at least three million euros, pit is one of the license requirements of the Bundesliga. (you switch to another service)
In this sense, the million-euro Kauhajoki has been extremely successful in its European games this season.
In terms of Finnishness, over the decades, many teams have reached very far in various Euro tournaments, but in the top four, like Karhubasket, only Lappeenranta NMKY has been in the tournaments of the entire continent.
Even then, in the 2005–2006 season, it was the fourth highest competition in Europe. The name at the time was FIBA EuroCup Challenge.
However, the wonderfulness of LrNMKY’s achievement is somewhat dimmed by the fact that the results were largely helped by “economic doping”.
Therefore, making a bear basket is undoubtedly one of the toughest in the history of Finnish club basketball.
It’s hard to compare with HJK – Karhubasket is already unique in itself
How do Karhubasket’s performances compare in general in Finnish football?
The most enthusiastic have compared the feats of the Kauhajoki players to the performances of the Helsinki Football Club in recent years on the Euro fields. In the last two seasons, HJK has reached the group stage in the Europa League and the Conference League.
Purely comparing the number of teams in two different leagues and the rankings of Finnish teams, Karhu and HJK are very close.
When comparing to football, however, it is good to remember that in football the best players in the world compete in Europe. In basketball, the absolute top of the sport plays in North America.
On the other hand, even winning should have its own value. One thing in particular has been surprising in the success of Bearbasket.
Prior to Wednesday night’s visit to Poland, Karhubasket had won all of their away games in the FIBA Europe Cup this season. Also once before in Wloclawek. So the balance of away games is 7 wins and 1 loss. This must be very rare, if not unique, from a Finnish ball team.
Even now, the battle for victory could perhaps have been tighter, but Wloclawek had gotten stronger from the previous encounter, and kauhajokiki, on the other hand, was missing its two American reinforcements.
When comparing to HJK, the financial aspects of European basketball games also come to the fore. In the case of HJK’s European success, there has been talk of how money flows from it even to other Veikkausliiga clubs. For Bearbasket, the FIBA Europe Cup is not a money grab, quite the opposite.
Instead of looking for points of comparison, perhaps it would be worth just contenting yourself with glowing Karhubasket’s own unique story. Halls of international level and how the city of 13,000 inhabitants has struggled to succeed on European courts. Hats off!