Basketball Highlights 139
Cup finals highlights: Barca dominates Valencia; Siena squeaks past Cinderella; PAO bests “club of filth” Olympiacos; Korac Cup final postponed
Congratulations go out from BallinEurope this morning to FC Barcelona, Montepaschi Siena and Panathinaikos, perhaps each respectively their nation’s top basketball club, for taking domestic cup titles this weekend. In Spain, FC Barcelona showed no letup after outlasting Real Madrid in Thursday’s barnburner from the Copa Del Rey quarterfinal round and cruised through Valencia BC […]
Lowlight of the week: Mirza Teletovic gets air (not the good kind) on three consecutive shots for Brooklyn Nets
Oh, Mirza. Mirza, Mirza, Mirza…
Il Tornado (a.k.a. Daniel Hackett) levels cameraman, Julio Jones-style
Fans of the NFL will surely long remember Julio Jones’ taking out of a security guard during the NFC Championship Game; heck, the thing went viral immediately … in any case, BallinEurope’s got the European basketball equivalent for you. Check out Montepaschi Siena’s Daniel Hackett living up to the “Tornado” sobriquet in his team’s unfortunate […]
Highlight of the weekend: Spartak Vladivostok get surprise assist in match vs. Unics Kazan
A shout out to Sportando, which draws our attention this morning to what could very well be “The Assist of the Year.” From the yesterday’s Unics Kazan-Spartak Vladivostok PBL match, here’s Troy Gillenwater beating a zone defense by cleverly finding the open man – Gundars Vetra – who in turn feeds Aleksei Golyakhov for the […]
On Zalgiris Kaunas and developing Clutch Identity
After watching Žalgiris Kaunas stumble through heartbreakers and possible backbreakers in the Euroleague Top 16 round, BallinEurope’s agent in Lithuania, Y., couldn’t help but confirm his suspicions about the Greens’ performances in crunch time. Y. probably wasn’t, but you may be surprised at the secret culture of losing within the Lithuanian power… It’s almost unreal, […]
All eyes on Bobby Brown going into Montepaschi Siena-BC Khimki match
“In the future, everyone will be famous for one news-cycle” — that’s how BallinEurope would update Andy Warhol’s well-worn line for the 21st century. Until the story’s been beaten to death (and the public consciousness’ short-term fascination ends) on Friday, everyone gets a turn in the media spotlight: Honey Boo Boo, McKayla Maroney’s face, UFO […]
Highlight clip of the weekend: Valencia outlasts Bilbao in 113-111 shootout
Who needs “more speed, more excitement, a more free-flowing style” of basketball? Certainly not a couple of teams in the Liga Endesa this weekend, namely Eurocup contenders Valencia Basket and the Euroleague-bounced Uxue Bilbao. Valencia ultimately triumphed in overtime by a whopping final tally of 113-111. The boxscore alone is worthy of goggling over, with […]
BallinEurope's most popular stories of 2012
BiE likes to write up this particular roundup at year’s end for a couple of reasons: Firstly as a thank you to the readers who check out BallinEurope however frequently; like they say in sports, this website wouldn’t exist without the audience. Secondly, a look back at which BallinEurope stories drew the most attention provides […]
Watch all 33 points of Juan Carlos Navarro’s explosion against Real Madrid
It seems La Bomba may be immortal after all … At the age of 32 and in his 13th season on the professional level, Juan Carlos Navarro isn’t quite playing the minutes he used to; in Saturday’s display against the previously ACB-undefeated Real Madrid, the king showed he hasn’t abdicated anything yet. With just enough […]
BallinEurope’s Euroleague Regular Season All-Star Team
As The Continent has bid adieu to eight teams’ Euroleague bids for 2012-13, BallinEurope looks back briefly to take a brief look back at the regular season’s best – not to mention spindly some quality time outside the mall and in front of the YouTube. The BallinEurope 2012-13 Euroleague Regular Season All-Star Team looks as […]
Poll: Which is the best European team going into 2013?
Right. So. Especially after this – – and with the calendar page about to be flipped into 2013, BallinEurope’s question is: Which is the best basketball team in Europe right now? Straight by the qualification system, the top four teams in Euroleague round one were Real Madrid, Maccabi Tel Aviv, FC Barcelona and Žalgiris Kaunas […]
Video: Dario Saric’s debut with Cibona Zagreb
While embeddable Adriatic League game clips are somewhat hard to come by through traditional online methods, the folks at the ABA have nicely provided entire game clips on their official website. As noted by BallinEurope, Dario “The Next Big Thing Out of Croatia” Saric debuted for 2012-13 on Sunday with Cibona Zagreb in the storied […]