Eurobasket 2009 96
On the road to London: Describing Team France’s five-year plan
While much of the Continent enjoys Easter Monday and North America heads back to work, BallinEurope takes the occasion today to clear out a few items from the backburner. First up, here’s part four of the “On the Road to London” mini-documentary series on Team France’s leadup to the 2012 Olympic Games. This episode dedicated […]
Gershon: “Jasikevicius is key for Panathinaikos”; “Who can stop McCalebb?”
Over at Greece-based Eurohoops.net, yesterday was posted a nice interview with already-legendary former head coach Pini Gershon. Gershon in Europe is mostly known for his establishment of Maccabi Tel Aviv as a European basketball powerhouse, with Continental titles taken in 2001*, 2004, and 2005 (*actually a FIBA SuproLeague title in that strange season of two […]
EuroBasket 2011: Notes, quotes, clips and Fearless Predictions™ for France vs. Spain
Hard to believe it’s almost over … after 19 days of intense basketball competition, the 2011 EuroBasket championship game features a matchup at least a few — including BallinEurope’s U.K. guy Sam Chadwick; props! — had forecast as the outcome. Spain seeks to defend its title against a star-laden France playing in its first-ever title […]
Eurobasket 2011 round two: Impressions, links, notes and highlights
With just two days (and one game per team) remaining in 2011 EuroBasket round two, BallinEurope takes a brief look at some issues and trends going down in the tournament – plus links and YouTubes, of course. Read on for quips, quotes and clips. • Importance of remaining games. Of six games left to play, […]
France vs. Spain friendly: Parker to play 100th for France, Noah gets first warmup
Happy 100th, Tony Parker! As in the 100th appearance he’ll be making for the French national team tonight in a friendly between Les Bleus and Team Spain in Almeria. Parker has been synonymous with both Team France and the FIBA Eurobasket tournament itself; barring injury, the San Antonio Spur’s appearance in Lithuania for this year’s […]
Vesely named FIBA Europe young player of 2010
[Editor’s note: BallinEurope apologizes for a previous edition of this piece which incorrectly identified Jan Vesely as having rights owned by the Oklahoma City Thunder. This was a grievous error of which you surely need not know details. Rest assured that the infinite number of monkeys formerly ravaging the BiE headquarters are now under control […]
Euroleague week three talking points (part I)
Seven Euroleague games go off tonight as the season rounds into form a bit. The marquee match tonight has got to be the Khimki-Baskonia showdown to establish early supremacy in that tough Group A; Olympiacos-Unicaja will surely be worth the viewing as well, although the way the Reds have dominated on their home floor lately […]
Baumann of FIBA/IOC levies more demands on British basketball
Despite the fact that Team Britain has managed to qualify for 2010 Eurobasket tournaments on both men’s and women’s sides, FIBA secretary-general/International Olympic Committee member Patrick Baumann has placed yet another condition to be met in exchange for bids at the 2012 Olympic Games. According to today’s Scotsman newspaper via a letter sent from Baumann […]
How it feels to be a Lithuanian fan
Last Tuesday in the 2010 FIBA World Championship, Team Lithuania completed a huge comeback to defeat the heavily-favored Spain 76-73 – just another win on the way to the tournament round, albeit an exceedingly exciting one, right? Wrong. BallinEurope’s man in Lithuania, known in this space since last year’s LKL championship series insanity as Y., […]
Perovic: No Gasol is the difference for Spain
When Serbia and Spain meet tonight to determine which of the European powers will advance to the 2010 FIBA World Championship final four, it will mark the third time the squads meet in one year – in fact, it’s been 366 days since the relatively unheralded young Serbs surprised the sluggish Spaniards in their Eurobasket […]
Official BallinEurope Power Rankings: Pre-knockouts edition
Now that noted astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has announced God’s non-existence in our universe through mathematics, maybe he can start working on explaining the FIBA tie-breaking procedure. No, no, don’t start on BiE; it’s as easy as dialing up Wikipedia to find the steps in determining seeding for tournament play: Placement is determined based on, in […]
Greece vs. Russia: He who wins shall lose?
“Sometimes when you win, you really lose. And sometimes when you lose, you really win. And sometimes when you win or lose, you actually tie and sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose. Winning or losing is all one organic globule, from which one extracts what one needs.” – Gloria Clemente, White Men […]