On this, the eve of Euroleague basketball 2012-13 edition, David Hein and BallinEurope (unleash) present a serious gabfest on all things Euroleague (and some NBA) with two of our favorite hoops scribes. It’s two hours of solid basketball talk, a.k.a. episode four in the “Taking the Charge” podcast series, which Hein took to calling “The Euroleague Bonanza” early. Show segments – really, this thing is so long, segmentation is necessary – are:
• A chat with UK-based John Hobbs of Talk Basket – Having attended several media events in Germany as well as the actual Alba Berlin-Dallas Mavericks NBA Europe Live tour game itself, John joined David Hein and myself to talk about Dirkamania, marketing the NBA (particular in that tricky British market) and the actually quite substantive >David Stern ‘n’ Jordi Bertomeu press conference of last week. Plus, fearless predictions from the Basket Talker … sort of.
• Dave and Davis observing the incredible parity in Europe’s big league this year – Seriously, isn’t the difference between, say, team no. 6 and team no. 16 or 17 razor-thin? Let’s see … bookmakers have traditional powerhouses Maccabi Tel Aviv and Panathinaikos (both made over, wait-and-see teams, in BiE’s estimation) in sixth and seventh spots to win this thing outright, while Partizan is at 16. You mean to say that the Black-and-Whites couldn’t surprise the new-look Greens in Pionir…? Alas, we won’t see it in 2012. But 2013 in the Top 16 round…? Also, we announce our way-too-freaking-early picks for the Final Four tourney in London – plus Hein insists that we perform a moratorium by choosing which of the first 24 will fare most poorly in the first round. He’s a macabre guy, BiE tells ya…
• Finally, general Euroleague man in-the-know/fantasy basketball guru Javier Gancedo joins us to talk expectations for EL 2012-13. Why should you pay attention to players like Paul Davis, Blake Schilb, Pietro Aradori, Vladimir Lucic, Jordan Farmar, Jagos Lasic, Alex Abrines and Mario Hezonja among many others, in both fantasy and actual ball this year? Tune in to find out. And you bet we finagled Javier’s choices for the Final Four out of him, too … BiE’ll give you one spoiler: All of us like Fenerbahçe Ülker and FC Barcelona. After that, well…
The entire (long-ass) podcast may be found here – soon this stuff will be available on iTunes, we promise.
