Ersan Ilyasova 48
From A.I. to Zalgiris: The top stories in 2009-10 European basketball
As BallinEurope closes the book on the 2009-10 basketball season, it’s time to take stock of the year that was with the clarity of history. Without further ado, let’s retrospect on the top 10 Eurocentric basketball stories of the season.
What’s missing from FIBA’s World Championship ad campaign?
So the Euroleague season is over and, though domestic league action is still with us for a couple months longer (BallinEurope’s “European Champions” feature is coming soon), something of that international competition spirit is missing for the nonce – at least until the FIBA World Championships in August and September! And so the high-profile FIBA […]
Draft profile: Jan Vesely
In tribute to that great international pastime known as “NBA mock drafting,” BallinEurope’s man in the U.K., Sam Chadwick, periodically takes a look at some of Europe’s prospective high draft picks. Today’s profile features the Czech Republic’s Jan Vesely, a power forward reckoned to be the second European taken in the NBA draft (after Donatas […]
The offical BiE NBA 2009-10 European All-Star Team
As one of the popular highlights of the NBA season, everything about the annual All-Star Game is loaded with pomp, hype and (hopefully) fun. No exception was that moment many a basketball fan awaits with gusto and prepares to heartily attack in argument as the naming of the rosters for the teams that will be […]
The Innocents Abroad, Part one: Assessing Europe's NBA rookies and sophs
With the NBA regular season nearly one-quarter finished (yeesh, when did that happen?), Ball in Europe takes a look at the league’s freshmen and sophomores from The Continent. The NBA currently lists over 80 international players on its rosters, with exactly 50 coming from European quarters. About one-fifth of those are recent enough entries to […]
The European Player of the Year nominees are…
The nominees are in over at FIBA Europe and, with the exception of one (or two, thanks to Rubiomania) categories, voting could be pretty tight in the FIBA Europe Player of the Year 2009. Yes, Pau Gasol and Ricky Rubio are on the list in a threat to become repeat winners in the Male POY […]
Morning Eurohoops news: November 30
It’s Monday morning and that means news! A handful of news briefs, columns and video to tip off your own week this week. Enjoy! • The biggest domestic-league game of the weekend? How about Panathinaikos vs. Olympiacos in Greece on Sunday? Behind Josh Childress (6-of-9 shooting to got with 10 rebounds), Olympiacos prevailed, 87-76, to […]
Euroleague team preview: Regal FC Barcelona
Over the next few days, BallinEurope.com will be running brief previews on Euroleague teams in advance of Opening Day (well, Opening Day for 92% of the league, anyway). Today, Jaime Martínez Lafargue, editor of the (mostly) Spanish-language website Solobasket.com, takes a look at the monsters from Barcelona. The Regal FC Barcelona roster is simply amazing. […]
After Eurobasket, the future: Part Two
In part two of Ball in Europe’s look at Europe’s top teams following Eurobasket 2009, Francesco Cappelletti contributes his analysis of present and future for those nations who did not finish in Eurobasket’s top four. Part one, featuring looks at Spain, Serbia, Greece, and Slovenia, may be found by clicking here. FRANCE Absences: Mickael Pietrus, […]
BallinEurope's Alternate Eurobasket 2009 All-Tournament Team
While the FIBA folks duly announced their EuroBasket 2009 All-Tournament Team directly after Spain’s thrashing of Serbia last night – and a dandy quintet it is, too – BallinEurope would like to extend some approbation to a few other ballers, some guys who proved revelatory in assisting their teams’ success almost as much or even […]
Hack-an-Asik and other fearless predictions for Eurobasket 2009, day 10
How do you explain “they should swallow their whistles” to someone who knows nothing about sports? (And I mean really nothing; we’re talking live-six-years-in-Chicago-during-the-Jordan-Era-and-still-not-know-the-difference-between-Bulls-and-Bears nothing.) That was my situation during large portions of the second and third quarters of the France-Greece game last night as to the wife’s chagrin I yelled at the TV. While […]
Eurobasket 2009 fearless predictions VIII: Titanic vs. Hindenburg headline matchup
If you had told a basketball fan about today’s Spain-Lithuania Eurobasket second-round matchup two weeks, he/she might have figured it to be one of the tournament’s most interesting games. It still is, of course, but for the exact opposite reason one may have expected. In one corner is Team Spain, a bunch of household names […]