Rony Turiaf 12
BallinEurope’s 2010 FIBA World Championship power rankings 3.0
All right, now everything about the 2010 FIBA World Championship is coming into focus! For example, now we know how good the relatively unknown Lithuanian squad will be – because they beat Slovenia after having to come back and go overtime against the Czech Republic. Um, and Argentina showed they’re awesome by … blowing a […]
Team France's Rodrigue Beaubois injured, out of FIBA World Championship
Team France is rapidly becoming a team of have-nots in advance of the 2010 FIBA World Championships. Just one day after coach Vincent Collet made Joakim Noah’s non-participation with France official, the squad has also been forced to announce that 22-year-old Dallas Maverick Rodrigue Beaubois has suffered a foot injury and will not be playing […]
Timofey Mozgov vows “I will prove myself in the NBA”; no word from Knicks on FIBA Worlds
How did the Knicks scoop the Nets on this one? And does Mikhail Prokhorov know about this? The New York Times, among other sources, reported last night that BC Moscow Khimki region center Timofey Mozgov has signed a three-year, $10 million deal with the New York Knicks. The move comes as a bit of a […]
2010 FIBA World Championship odds: Looking for a dark horse {advertorial}
So call BallinEurope kooky: While everyone else with an eye on basketball – even European basketball, for Arvydas Sabonis’ sake – is concentrating on the NBA free-agent market, BiE is all attention on the 2010 FIBA World Championship for Men tipping off in Turkey in August. Naturally, bookmakers too are into it and the early […]
Kobe likely addition to no-shows for 2010 FIBA World Championship
The folks at FIBA are referring to the upcoming 2010 World Championship tournament in Turkey as a “Giant Get-Together,” but with every passing day it seems the meeting gets just a bit smaller. In seemingly the first mention of such an exclusion, USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo lumped Kobe Bryant in with confirmed or near-confirmed […]
Draft profile: Donatas Motiejunas
Now that NBA mock drafting is in full swing (despite the total lack of clarity regarding playoff positioning, not to mention seeing how the damn lottery ping-pong balls fall this year), BallinEurope’s man in the U.K., Sam Chadwick, will be taking a look at some of Europe’s prospective high draft picks. Today, it’s all about […]
Best of the (basketball) net: Double-sized two-week edition
Right. Because this column did not appear last weekend due to the tsunami of Eurobasket 2009 games, this week’s Best of The (Basketball) Net includes good stuff still enjoyable and written that long, long, 14 days ago in some cases. Enjoy! The most discussed basketball event of the off-season – besides Dude Perfect and The […]
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 […]
Fearless predictions for Eurobasket 2009 day seven
After the dust settled from a scintillating trio of Eurobasket 2009 games played yesterday, two questions remained: 1) Should we now pencil Turkey in for the finals or merely the final four? And 2) which is the bigger train wreck right now, Spain or Lithuania? Today’s slate of games looks to be a fairly predictable […]
Fearless predictions for Eurobasket 2009 day five
Children’s flus and other duties prevent a longer entry today, but it wouldn’t be Eurobasket 2009 without BallinEurope’s fearless predictions. Tonight’s slate of games includes: Russia v. Croatia. Team Russia has done an admirable job with limited resources, while any mojo Croatia may have worked up in summer friendlies has disappeared in two consecutive fairly […]
The official BallinEurope FIBA Eurobasket 2009 All First-Round Team
Since we live in the cyberworld of the sound bite, instant history and, most importantly for the sports world, hyperbole, Ball in Europe officially unveils its first-round all-stars; hey, for some of these guys, the Eurobasket tournament is *the* moment in the international spotlight, so let’s help ‘em live it up! Ladies and gentlemen, yourrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr […]
Betting on basketball: MVP, tops in points, rebounds, assists
Tomorrow is the day: Eurobasket 2009 finally tips off. Naturally, Euroleague/Ball in Europe sponsor SportingBet.com has a plethora of odds and lines for your amusement, including some intriguing fodder for discussion in the form of individual-awards proposition bets. So you think you know not only who’s going to stand atop the podium when it’s over, […]