Chicago Bulls 103
Spain takes U20 European title, Nikola Mirotic tourney MVP, notice served
Congratulations go out from BallinEurope this morning to Team Spain, winners of the FIBA U20 European Championship with an 82-70 win over Italy to cap an undefeated run through the tournament. In so doing, notice has been served to the world that Espana has apparently produced yet another generation of ballers to someday soon act […]
From Kanter to Bogdanovic: Brief looks at seven Europeans drafted into NBA
The 2011 NBA Draft is still going on as of this writing, but with the amazing amount of Continental players going early and often – a direct contrast to last year’s greatly Europe-bereft selections – BallinEurope gets in a quick two Eurocents with a brief look at (and YouTube clips of) the first seven players […]
Parker, Noah, Diot lead big names filling France’s Eurobasket 2011 squad
Twelve players and four backups have been selected to represent France at the upcoming Eurobasket 2011 tournament; gut reaction says that Les Bleus would appear to be one of the favorites to emerge out of Group B in pool play. The group competition will include Germany, Israel, Italy, Latvia and Serbia. The 12-man roster is […]
Has it really been 18 years? Remembering Drazen Petrovic
An entire generation has entered basketball since his untimely passing and while ever-growing numbers of NBA and European stars who have never seen him play emerge, all owe a debt to Dražen Petrović. It was on this day in 1993 that the only man who realistically could have held claim to the sobriquet of “the […]
Dastardly Dirk versus The Big Z: Who deserves a ring more?
The two have played a combined 1,837 regular-season NBA games, scoring over 33,750 points while nabbing more than 14,500 rebounds over 24½ full seasons. Each has rewritten the franchise record books of the team for which he spent the overwhelming majority of his career. Each has been underrated for much, if not all, of his […]
Romanian playoffs: Cluj-Napoca meets Gaz Metan Medias in last game of semifinals
In case you don’t have enough hoops to watch today – there’s the Nike International Junior Tournament, the Real Madrid-Montepaschi Siena Euroleague third-place game, the Euroleague championship, the Chicago Bulls-Atlanta Hawks playoff game, and the Los Angeles Lakers going out like chumps and ending the brilliant career of Phil Jackson rather ignominiously playing the Dallas […]
Playing with money: Are some European NBA players worth it?
Finally blessed with a bit of time to peruse ESPN’s compelling financial stats as presented in its magazine’s “All About the Money” issue (check them out if you haven’t already; big numbers are fun!), BallinEurope just couldn’t help, well … noodling around with the numbers some more! Over at the big network’s Chicago Blackhawks blog, […]
Curtis Stinson, formerly of Split, Aris, wins D-League MVP: What does it mean?
The tweet from Draft Express rang out at 4.30am CET and posed quite the complex question. To wit: “What does Curtis Stinson – a guy no team in the NBA or Europe has any interest in – winning MVP of the D-League, say about the D-League?” Such consternation clearly comes from one with an encyclopedic […]
NBA Eastern Conference Playoffs: The Eurocentric View
With the NBA playoffs starting today, BallinEurope takes another brief look at the matchups drawing our attention for the next 137 months or so. Unlike the Western Conference half of the bracket, Eastern teams are disappointingly low on European players stocking their rosters. No matter: We’ve still got the FIBA Bulls and the Big Z […]
Vlade Divac’s All-Star Weekend in Hungary
So how did Vlade Divac spend his All-Star weekend? By hanging out with former Bull/Cavalier/Raptor/Gran Canaria/Tau Ceramica big man Kornél Dávid plus a buncha players from Hungary and old Yugoslavia! As a prelude to the Hungarian National League all-star game between locals and foreign-born players, the country’s sole NBA product was reunited with his fellow […]
Hungary’s first NBA player/current Phoenix Suns scout Kornel David visits Lithuania
The Pride of Hungarian Basketball was recently spotted in Lithuania, where he was doing scouting work for the Phoenix Suns. Former Žalgiris Kaunas big man/Hungary’s first-ever NBA player Kornél Dávid sat in on the Caja Laboral Baskonia game in Kaunas last week and afterwards granted an interview to Žalgiris radio. (Naturally, Dávid doesn’t give name […]
Interview: Dirk Nowitzki on lockout, Caron Butler, Bayern Munich
BallinEurope friends and sponsors Kickz.com recently managed to score an interview with Mr. All-Time Europa NBA himself, Dirk Nowitzki while his Dallas Mavericks trained in the preseason. Below runs a translation of the German-language discussion in which Dirk discusses the importance of Caron Butler, which teams showed interest in him during the offseason, the collective […]