Chris Kramer Can Still Get It Done

Let’s check in on the German League, where Purdue favorite Chris Kramer is still getting it done night after night with defense. This week he is up for the Play of the Week.

The first play is a ridiculous block by Kelvin martin, formerly of Charleston Southern. The second, however, is our man Kramer. He gets the steal (natürlich) and goes on the break to deliver a posterization dunk.

Kramer is in his fifth season with EWE Baskets Oldenburg and has settled in quite nicely as one of their top contributors. He is averaging 10.6 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 7 assists per game.

EWE Baskets currently sits in 5th place in the Basketball Bundesliga. They also qualified for the inaugural Basketball Champions League, played throughout Europe kind of like the soccer Champions League. It is explained as follows:

In October 2015, FIBA attempted to take back control of Europe's 1st tier club competition, by proposing a new competition, featuring 16 teams playing in a round-robin format, granting eight guaranteed spots to different clubs. When the top European clubs decided to abide with the same competition format, but keeping the organization within Euroleague Basketball, FIBA announced the launching of the new European basketball club competition with a qualification based on sporting merits.

Essentially, the Champions League is trying to be like the soccer Champions League in which you have to qualify each season based on the previous year’s domestic performance, while the Euroleague (the top non-NBA competition in the world) would have a mix of permanent teams and qualified teams. There is a big controversy about it and it is still being solved, but basically Kramer’s team is playing in the FIBA-sanctioned equivalent of soccer’s Champion’s League.