Lithuania 191
List of 2009-10 European basketball champions
League play is now accelerating to a close all over The Continent, and BallinEurope’s “List of European Champions” page gets more updates. Most men’s domestic leagues have completely closed up shoppe for 2009-10, but BiE has also listed a few details on where other leagues stand at present; links are provided where possible. If no […]
Homage to the Killer: BallinEurope’s video tribute to Arvydas Macijauskas
Reader AM recently noted his disappointment with BiE lately due to this website’s non-reportage on the recent premature retirement of 30-year-old Arvydas Macijauskas on Wednesday. At the time BiE heard the news, the story had already been well reported on dozens of other websites and so passed on writing something up. However, AM is right […]
Gershon out in Tel Aviv, Sakalauskas in in Kaunas
A couple of news bites this morning on some high-profile coach firings and hirings in European basketball. In Tel Aviv, Pini Gershon is out as head coach and heavy rumor-mongering has Maccabi picking up current Team Russia/former Aris Thessaloniki head coach David Blatt as a replacement. After two telephone meetings with club management, Maccabi officials […]
Business as usual in Lithuania: Romanov sound bite, L.Rytas signs Newley
What was that about the fat cat singing…? Followers of Lithuanian basketball this season were no doubt immensely let down by Žalgiris Kaunas owner Vladimir Romanov’s superbrief post-game press conference after his coachless team’s defeat in game seven of the LKL championship series. Lasting approximately 12 seconds, the entire “conference” with media representatives consisted of […]
Big third quarter boosts L.Rytas to LKL championship win over Zalgiris Kaunas, 80-71
Congratulations go out tonight to Lietuvos Rytas, who decisively won the Lithuanian Basketball League (LKL) championship over arch-rival Žalgiris Kaunas, 80-71. Thus ends a very bizarre LKL playoffs and, for Žalgiris Kaunas, a revolving door of a season at coach with the final four games seeing the team essentially sort-of led by some combination of […]
Invisible to insane: The six types of basketball team owner
They say that no one has ever bought a ticket to a sports event in order to see an executive but with two weeks of American and European basketball club owners hogging sports page headlines, BallinEurope got to thinking about these moneyed celebrity types who run the teams we watch … and the often disturbing […]
Official 2010 BallinEurope mock draft, version 2.0
Now that the order for the 2010 NBA Draft has been officially settled, BallinEurope’s man in the U.K., Sam Chadwick, revisits his mock draft of last week with updated prognostications for the first 30 choices. Prospective European draftees in Donatas Motiejunas and Miroslav Raduljica haven’t budged on Sam’s chart and much of the lower half […]
Romanov "addresses the challenge of curbing the blogger" in LKL Championship game five
Well, it wouldn’t be the 2010 Lithuanian Basketball League championship without the daily Vladimir Romanov story in advance of the next game, the third consecutive in which Žalgiris Kaunas will play without an official head coach. Apparently, the Žalgiris owner made the trip over to Vilnius with the team’s sports director Šarūnas Sakalauskas to watch […]
Headless horsemen of Zalgiris go coach-free again tonight
In Lithuania, Žalgiris Kaunas’ bizarre personnel situation, i.e. no official head coach named with a maximum three games remaining in the LKL season, continues. Žalgiris owner Vladimir Romanov spent the weekend *not* officially naming anyone to the position; the role was apparently unofficially filled by guard Marcus Brown in last Thursday’s 83-70 win over longtime […]
The official BallinEurope NBA draft mock
Courtesy of the Everyone Else Is Doing It So Why Don’t We Department comes the official BallinEurope mock NBA draft for 2010. Our man in the UK, Sam Chadwick looks into his metaphorical crystal ball to see how the American clubs might be thinking on draft day. BiE will be running official mock draft 2.0 […]
Coachless in Kaunas, Žalgiris wins anyway to knot up LKL championship series
Now Žalgiris Kaunas is truly entering into uncharted waters. After canning Darius Maskoliunas earlier this week and watching assistant coach Gvidonas Markevičius stomp out of the organization thereafter, Žalgiris owner Vladimir Romanov sent his team into game four of the Lithuanian national league (LKL) championship series headless – unless you count those two guys looking […]
“I am the miracle”: Video evidence of Romanov’s, um, wackiness
Zalgiris Kaunas owner Vladimir Romanov told Lithuanian media last night that, though he knows who his team’s fifth coach of the season on the eve of game four of the Lithuanian League finals, he won’t reveal the name until game time. Well, today, the prospective list has one fewer name on it: Former assistant coach […]