The Basketball Champions League standings table is the real deal when it comes to top European club competitions - courtesy of FIBA. Teams from loads of national leagues put their best foot forward during the season, creating a multi-stage format that makes you want to pay close attention to the standings and group rankings, as they're what decide which clubs get to go on to the next round.
Teams from Spain, Greece, Turkey, Germany, Italy and Israel are regular players in the tournament, with big hitters like Unicaja Málaga, Lenovo Tenerife, AEK Athens and Hapoel Jerusalem always in the mix, frequently vying for the top spots in the table.
The competition kicks off with a group stage, where teams get split into groups and play a round-robin schedule. When it comes to deciding the standings, teams are judged on:
Don't be surprised if point differential ends up being the deciding factor when teams are neck and neck at the end of the group stage.
The top teams from the initial groups move on to the Round of 16, where new groups are formed, and the standings are used to figure out which clubs get to go on to the knockout stage.
Now, team form really starts to count, as only the top teams from each group get a ticket to the playoffs.
Once the group stages are done, the competition moves into a knockout playoff round, followed by the Final Four, where the Basketball Champions League champion gets crowned.
Teams that are higher up in the standings generally benefit from easier matchups and being at home in the playoff stages.
Because teams from different domestic leagues are all in on the action, standings can change on a dime depending on team form and how teams have been travelling. As a rule, teams with deep squads and strong domestic form tend to keep their records pretty consistent throughout the competition.
When analysing the tournament, it's a good idea to keep an eye on team form, where the standings are heading and scoring patterns. These factors are often pretty good indicators of which teams are going to make it to the later stages of the Basketball Champions League.