He aims to play a ‘total’ defense. Here is a nice analysis (I think TZ has posted it somewhere here already) how Rubio might be the difference-maker in the defense that Steve Nash is in the offense. He plays very risky and although his lateral quickness is not perfect (though slightly underrated and his body is still developing), his legs are strong and he reads the opponents very well . It is true that more experienced players such as Spanoulis or Chris Paul overplayed him (although in the match against Greece it might be due to his first match), but exactly, he is 17…
In the season before the last, the kid led all players in the Euroleague in steals with 3.2 while playing less than 19 minutes and being just 16 years old (15 at the beginning of the season). He is immature, but pretty much focused with a very good surrounding of adults around him. He might not be a franchise player, but he will be good.

Warped was was unbelievable today, eight angst filled stages with thousands of punks, skunks, mods, ska cats, emo chicks, pirates, princesses, and entirely too many men in hot pants(if your going to do at least have the fortitude to pop a few viagras beforehand). Ahh it was glorious.

Well, in the fact almost each European country has its own national league (actually, I think each country has its own league, it used to be a condition by the international federation).

Apart from that, there are few regional leagues where teams compete along with their domestic competitions (such as Adriatic League /now NLB league/, Blatic League, or Balkan International League), ususally consisting of teams from few countries due to the conditions their federations agree on.

And finally, there are (nowadays three) the whole-Europe competition formats, ULEB Eurocup, The EuroChallenge and the Euroleague itself. Here, a team has to qualify to compete, based on the results in the domestic league or in the respective competition the previous year. (For example, the domestic champions in several countries qualify directly to the Euroleague as well as the winner of the ULEB cup, which is a second-tier competition, does. The EuroChallenge is a third-tier competition. However, the EuroLeague is open only for teams from certain countries, such as Spain, France, Italy, Israel, Russia, Lithuania, Turkey, Greece, Germany etc., i.e. from the best leagues in Europe).

Finally, there are two organisations in Europe that umbrella these competition, FIBA Europe (organising the EuroChallenge) and the ULEB (Union of European Leagues of Basketball), which focuses directly on the best and professional teams in Europe. So to compete in particular European competitions depends also on the agreements your team and/or your national federation has with the respective organisation… Complicated.

By “Euroleague”, usually the Euroleague, i.e. the best of these international leagues is understood, however, for example Joventud Badalona, which you might know as Ricky Rubio and Rudy Fernandez (coming to Portland and I think the MVP of the Spanish league last year) along with Jerome Moiso among others, who played in NBA, won the ULEB Cup last year. They had not qualified to the Euroleague the year before from their domestic Spanish league, so they competed in the second-best Euorpean competition. As a winner of this, they would qualify to the next year of Euroleague directly, no matter how they would have finished in the domestic league in Spain. Dynamo Moscow is a winner of the ULEB in 2006, I think.

A quite interesting (although very specific) article about few of European league in terms of discussing the future of Brandon Jennings is for example here

Although “to compete in Euroleague” is usually a label for players going to Europe, actually not all of them are going to do that. They might compete in other trans-national competitions, they might compete in the regional leagues and they might even compete ‘only’ in the domestic leagues in the countries they go to (which are very different, in terms of quality, style of game, public interest and support, the conditions for foreign players etc.).

The Russian leagues is not the best in Europe (perhaps the Spanish is), but they seem to have the most money in perspective. For example, in ice-hockey, they have plans to build a format that would compete with the NHL. Also, Russia always has a couple of top teams in Europe (maybe Spain is more evened) and I think they do not have quotas for foreign players (I think there can be only two non-EU players in Spain per one team).