Jan
2

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 gold-medal match between the Dream Team and Team Croatia at the Barcelona Olympiad.

While few observers at that time thought the game would even be close after The Greatest Team Ever Assembled (still) had demolished the competition in Barcelona, everyone was well aware that regardless of the final game’s result, the match would literally be one for the books, internationally.

And history has borne out that feeling, ultimately culminating in the unstoppable twelve entering the hallowed halls of Springfield later this year. The Dream Team’s influence was profound and immediate with the jump of basketball to near-preeminence among the world’s most beloved sports, the final burgeoning of the NBA to global sports juggernaut status, and a new emphasis among national sports committees worldwide on basketball. Some credit Spain’s masterful dominance of The Continent today on the Barcelona Games, as though the shine and glamour of Team USA had permeated the country to produce Gasols and Navarros and Rubios.

Twenty years later – and who’d’ve imagined this back then? – that game remains at your fingertips, available for viewing on YouTube in eight parts – Awesome.

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Oct
1

It won’t be “O2″ in 2012

Back in 1992, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and some others on the Dream Team covered up the verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry expensive Reebok logos on the red, white and blue jumpsuits the team wore while accepting their gold medals. Those of us old enough to recall even remember some hand-wringing when Mister Nike Air himself implied that he might not attend the gold-medal ceremony with the offending logo on his gear.

Twenty years later, due to the explosion of megabranding in the sportsworld (itself absolutely due in part to David Stern’s all-pervasive corporate and commercial blitzkrieg by his league, already a dozen years old by ’92), the O2 Arena in London will be challenged by corporate logo problems for the 2012 Olympic Games.

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Sep
4

After the Olympics: What’s the future of Germany?

The oldest European team in Beijing showed during the tournament that it has come to the end of a cycle. Several German players will end their career in the national team after this tournament, and coach Dirk Bauermann has now four years to rebuild a team to remain competitive.

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Sep
15

After the Olympics: What’s the future of Spain?

The Spanish national team is the most successful European team of recent years. The silver medal at the Olympics only confirmed this trend. Besides the coaching question that reigns at the moment, I will today look at the future in terms of player material.

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Sep
2

After the Olympics: What’s the future of Croatia?

Today, I am going to talk about the youngest European participant in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Croatian national team featured nine players born in 1982 or younger, something that no other team could offer. Let’s check how the next tournaments could look like for Jasmin Repesa’s guys.

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Aug
7

After the Olympics: What’s the future of Lithuania?

After having talked about the future of the Greek National team, today we’re going to analyze the current situation in the Lithuanian national team.

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Aug
6

After the Olympics: What’s the future of Greece?

The Olympic Games 2008 are history but the next basketball events for the national teams are just around the corner: Eurobasket 2009, World Championships 2010 and of course London 2012. BallinEurope.com takes a look at the current situation of Europe’s Olympic participants and gives an outlook into their future. To start, we are analyzing the situation in Greece.

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Aug
35

Comparing European and NBA travel calls

For some reason, many Europeans – especially Spanish players – complained a lot about the referees not calling the U.S. traveling.

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Aug
1

Monday’s cigarettes

The Olympics are over and the preseason is now officially launched. Here, the first Monday’s cigarettes of the season.

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Aug
20

Thanks to Spain and USA for a great basketball game

So the Redeem Team won the gold medal in Beijing. What in the end looked like no surprise must actually be considered a deserved win by the best team of the tournament: Nothing more and nothing less. The final game showed that the gap between the USA and the rest of the world is not widening again, but that USA needs to prepare and bring their best players in order to beat a Spanish team by only 11 points.

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