Dino Radja 16
Twenty Years Ago Today: A European Dream Team for 1992
When basketball fans look back on the 1992 Olympic Games, the top three topics are the awesomeness of the Dream Team, the success of Lithuania playing its first Olympic hoops as an independent nation, and the success of Croatia playing its first Olympic hoops as an independent nation. Fair enough, BiE supposes, but what about […]
Vlade Divac: The BallinEurope/YouTube career retrospective
BallinEurope sends out hearty congratulations to Serbian great Vlade Divac on his nomination for possible entry into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s “Class of 2012.” While Divac may be known as a famous trivia answer (“Who was traded for Kobe Bryant?”) or by the dreaded “F-word” (i.e. “flopper” as used in – really […]
Greatest of all-time: Yugoslavia or Spain?
An interesting exchange of tweets went down last Friday (yes, minus points for untimeliness, but on another job BallinEurope thought deep into the matter all weekend) between HoopsHype/ESPN Deportes writer Jorge Sierra and Team Australia/Milwaukee Bucks big man Andrew Bogut. Things started innocuously enough, with Sierra plugging a Spanish-language piece he’d written for Deportes: “An […]
Career retrospective: Arvydas Sabonis, Hall of Famer
In honor of the legendary Arvydas Sabonis, the man Scottie Pippen once called “The greatest European basketball player ever to play the game,” entering the Basketball Hall of Fame, BallinEurope this morning reruns its career retrospective on the big man’s incredible career. Quite a collection of rare Sabonis footage exists in the collective consciousness of […]
Arvydas Sabonis: A career retrospective, via YouTube
BallinEurope sends out huge, 7’3” congratulations this morning to all-time great Arvydas Sabonis, finally inducted into the Professional Basketball Hall of Fame alongside luminaries such as Chris Mullin, Dennis Rodman (whoa, that’s still weird), Artis Gilmore, Tex Winter, “Goose” Tatum, Tom “Satch” Sanders, Tara Van Derveer, Herb Magee, and Teresa Edwards. A tribute in the […]
Valencia’s oldest its newest as team signs 44-year-old Darryl Middleton
When Darryl Middleton was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks, the NBA was ruled over by the likes of Larry, Magic and MJ, Sir Charles and Hakeem the Dream. Rookie of the year was Mark Jackson and the Detroit Pistons were ascending into dominance. Andrew Bynum was about nine months old; Blake Griffin and Brandon Jennings […]
Notes on Panathinaikos-Olympiacos, most important game of 2010-11
If tonight’s Panathinaikos-Olympiacos match isn’t the most important game thus far in the 2010-11 basketball season in Europe, BiE can’t think of what would be. Of no little significance in this clash of the titans, too, is its status as the first meeting between the teams since the 2009-10 EΣAKE championship final game, a.k.a. “The […]
Festivus Invitational Tournament continues: Dream Team handed stunning loss; Europeans barely survive 60s again
Four more games are in the books as the first-ever BallinEurope Festivus Invitational Basketball Tournament rolls on, shattering all attendance records for Budapest basketball (no major feat, but still) as fans gather to witness the all-time greats plucked from their native timestreams for their amusement … but who was amused when the Dream Team itself […]
Dream Team Europe nips 1960 Team USA, 107-106, in Festivus Invitational opener
The first annual BallinEurope Festivus Invitational Tournament tipped off today, brought to you incidentally (they probably even haven’t heard of BiE) by the sports simulation website What If Sports. Opening up the tournament is BiE’s own (slightly modified) Dream Team Europe, who hosts that original dream team, the 1960 Team USA squad that destroyed all […]
Introducing the 2010-11 BallinEurope Festivus Invitational Tournament
As a holiday present to the audience, each of you has received courtside tickets to the first annual BallinEurope Festivus Invitational Tournament. Thanks to the miracle of totally BiE-unaffiliated (and totally mind-blowingly awesome) website What If Sports, we can bring together great players of the past and present for true dream matchups – and without […]
Interview: Michael Tolajian, director of “Once Brothers”
Tomorrow night will see the ESPN premiere of the latest in its “30 for 30” documentary series, “Once Brothers.” This film focuses on the Yugoslavian basketball squads of 1988-1991, dream teams that included rosters filled with names such as Vlade Divac, Drazen Petrovic, Toni Kukoc, Dino Radja, Predrag Danilović, Stojan Vranković, and Jure Zdovc. When […]
Confirmed: Divac's "Once Brothers" in ESPN's "30 for 30" series
Thanks go out this morning to the folks at ESPN Communications and congratulations go out to Vlade Divac and filmmaker Michael Tolajian, whose documentary film “Jednom braća” (“Once Brothers”) has been confirmed as part of ESPN’s high-profile “30 for 30” documentary film series. The addition of Tolajian’s film to the series had been reported by […]