Marko Popovic 17
Zalgiris loses to Minsk, drops to 2-6 in tight European-league games; what is happening in Kaunas?
The conversations BallinEurope has with peers in the European basketball blogosphere lately tend to drift toward one team: Žalgiris Kaunas, the hardest luck team in Euroleague basketball. No, wait, strike that. Let’s start over. The conversations BallinEurope has with peers in the European basketball blogosphere lately tend to drift toward one team: Žalgiris Kaunas, a […]
Podcast: What's up in Kaunas and Bamberg? Interviews with Marko Popovic, Bamberg scouting director Brendan Rooney
Episode #23 — a belated 50th birthday gift to His Airness, then — in the heinnews/BallinEurope-coproduced “Taking the Charge” podcast series is now available online. David Hein and yours truly feature two interviews this time out, fortuitously timed in the wake of last week’s Brose Baskets Bamberg-Zalgiris Kaunas cliffhanger. First up is Marko Popovic, Zalgiris’ […]
On Zalgiris Kaunas and developing Clutch Identity
After watching Žalgiris Kaunas stumble through heartbreakers and possible backbreakers in the Euroleague Top 16 round, BallinEurope’s agent in Lithuania, Y., couldn’t help but confirm his suspicions about the Greens’ performances in crunch time. Y. probably wasn’t, but you may be surprised at the secret culture of losing within the Lithuanian power… It’s almost unreal, […]
Monday Hangover: Žalgiris Kaunas impressive again; Saric’s 2012-13 debut; Goldsberry’s Bizarro Buzzer-Beater of the Week
Damn, BallinEurope watched a lotta sports this past 72 years: Euroleague games, highlights, quarters here and there, a VTB United game, three hours of late-Sunday night NFL football, two sports-related films for upcoming Taking The Charge podcasts … life is ball games … and especially basketball, but unfortunately BiE watches almost nothing live and compresses […]
Euroleague Top 16, Week Two, Night One: Six games, 100 facts
Courtesy the Euroleague folks, BallinEurope brings a compendium of facts and figures spanning history and record books regarding tomorrow night’s slate of a half-dozen games – plus lines on the games and highlight clips. Enjoy! CSKA Moscow vs. Anadolu Efes Istanbul • CSKA leads the all-time series between the teams, 8-7. • Nenad Krstic has […]
List of 2010-11 European Basketball Champions
With most leagues drawing to a close and playoffs beginning – not to mention champions already crowned in Albania, Cyprus, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Norway and a few regional leagues – BallinEurope returns its “List of European Basketball Champions.” At present, only the above-listed domestic leagues have shut down for the summer; BiE supplies information on […]
Video clips: Unics Kazan wins, Real Madrid loses, and YouTube shows how not to dunk
While much of the basketball-loving world was distracted by the squall of opening-round NBA playoff games, the roundball game nevertheless played on in leagues throughout Europe and beyond. Of course, this lead-in mainly serves as an excuse to justify running the below handful of highlights, links and pithy bon mots to (help you waste some […]
Eurocup Championship: Unics Kazan master plan coming to fruition
Better late than never, as the old expression goes; and in the case of Unics Kazan’s 2010-11 season, continuing to achieve late could prove much better in the medium- and long-term future. Few teams so actively rebuilt and retooled with purpose last offseason as Unics Kazan, bringing aboard Slavko Vranes out of Partizan Belgrade, 2009-10 […]
BallinEurope’s completely relativistic 2010-11 All-Star Team (or, What? You’ve never heard of Bambale Osby?)
With most domestic basketball hitting a halfway point and the Euroleague into its second round, BallinEurope today pays tribute to some outstanding individual performances by naming its all-star team. No relative merits or penalties were assessed for the league in which BiE’s all-stars compete, and domination in one league was a top criteria for making […]
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 […]
Vrankovic names preliminary Team Croatia roster; includes 11 Euroleaguers, just six from Eurobasket
How do you say, “Let’s clean house!” in Croatian? Because that’s the phrase Team Croatia coach Josip Vrankovic was certainly employing when he assembled his 17-man preliminary FIBA World Championship. After the disappointing finish by the Croats in the 2009 Eurobasket competition, then-head coach Jasmin Repesa hastily resigned and thereafter replaced by Vrankovic; now Vrankovic […]
Popovic: Dislike Zalgiris management, love the fans
In the afterglow of the VTB United League final, Unics Kazan’s Marko Popovic briefly spoke with Lithuanian media after his team’s loss to CSKA Moscow in Friday’s third-place game. Popovic thanks the ever-devoted Zalgiris Kaunas fans, who gave him a rousing ovation when announced as a member of the all-tournament team (named so despite a […]