Welcome to this week’s Three Points, the column in which the expatriate takes his shot (or three) at roundball from Europe, a far-off galaxy where three- and four-day holidays are plentiful and thus are weekly columns actually submitted every eight days…
This one’s a tad short, but this week the YouTube pictures can easily speak about 1,000 words each, making this about 37 pages’ worth of printed matter. (Remember that stuff?)
Without further ado, then…
The Ideal Quintet. Everybody expected this Spanish Inquisition. (Sorry, Monty.) Spanish national league ACB named its Ideal Quintet – excellent name, that – with decent representation from the mother country in Rudy Fernandez (DKV Joventut), Marc Gasol (Akasvayu Girona and the Memphis Grizzlies, too, maybe someday), Felipe Reyes (Read Madrid), and just-seventeen Ricky Rubio. Topping off the five was Marcelinho Huertas (Iurbentia Bilbao) of Brazil.
Congratulations to la quintet and good luck in your various post-seasons! Ideal are you all! Hopefully, Gasol is right in his prediction that “It’s possible that four of these players in the quintet will play together later this year in Beijing.”
Almost time for Europe to come ‘round and get on the Team Spain bandwagon in overturning Team USA, eh?
Pau on “PTI.” Really? And the first question is on Phil’s “I felt guys just bailed out on him” line? Cool! (Yes, I know pimping for The Worldwide Leader in [American] Sports is lame. So shoot me.)
Quest for Team Cape Verde (and up-to-date information on Cape Verde) continues. Don’t know if you’ve heard this story, but hoops-worshipping Cape Verde recently got into the Olympics qualifiers by placing third in the 2007 African National Championship. Of course, they may not actually be attending the tournament in Athens due to financial reasons.
According to a local report on AfricaBasket.com from Pedro Gomes in April, the Cape Verdean Basketball Federation has established a deadline of 15 days to decide whether the national team will participate in the pre-Olympic qualifying tournament to be held in Athens from June 14-29.
At that time, federation members have yet to receive any guarantees for the financing of the operation, which budgeted around 40 million Cape Verdean Escudos (approximately USD 576,000/EUR 362,000).
Since then … nothing. Hell, the team’s official website hasn’t been updated since March. It’s a shame we can’t get more on this Cinderella story…
We do know, though, thanks to Boston reportage of Sunday that spry 41-year-old Boston resident Dana Barros may play for Team Cape Verde if in fact they actually physically arrive at the Olympic qualifiers.
Anybody out there know anything else…?
Cheers.
