Magic Johnson 19
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 […]
Pau Gasol, basketball all-stars > AIDS
Like many of us old enough to remember, Pau Gasol vividly recalls his thoughts upon hearing that Magic Johnson announced he had tested positive for HIV and thus would retire from NBA basketball. Indeed, Gasol was touched enough by what had happened to his sports hero that he began following an academic path into med […]
Dream Team vs. Redeem Team: Who wins?
From the Shameless Cross-Promotional Plug Department: BallinEurope’s sister site BuckBokai.com, with the assistance of the most-excellent sports simulation website WhatIfSports.com, considered part of the speculative statement made here upon the Dream Team’s admission to the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday, namely: …the only two teams … who *might* possibly give the Dream Team […]
The Greatest Basketball YouTube Ever (or, YouTube as a force for online democracy)
(Please excuse BallinEurope’s more personal tone today; trust me, i have as healthy a loathing for usage of the first-person in sports blogging as you no doubt do. On the other hand, it is called *You*Tube.) When i was coming of age in the Cold War 1980s, there wasn’t one basketball universe but rather two […]
Draft profile: Nemanja Bjelica
Now that the pingpong balls (or computer algorithm or mad scheme cooked up by David Stern, whichever you prefer) have spoken, we can truly let speculation on the 2010 NBA Draft run wild. Following up profiles on the likes of Donatas Motiejunas and Miroslav Raduljica, BallinEurope’s man in the U.K. Sam Chadwick today takes a […]
Revisiting USA-Croatia 1992 (or, Why YouTube is God, part 1 of many)
Reports last week that the Basketball Hall of Fame would be moving up the 2010 induction ceremony, so as to avoid conflict with the FIBA World Championship tournament and thus focus the hoops universe’s full attention on the 1992 USA Olympic team enshrinement, got me to reminiscing about that seminal game in basketball history: The […]
Review: "The Book of Basketball" by Bill Simmons
The only good thing about getting a nasty flu? Easy: Lots of time for reading monster tomes like Bill Simmons’ “The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy”. Thanks to a sentinel from the legion of The 2009 Killer Viruses, i was able to knock down all 697 pages of this thing […]