(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 developing in parallel. While we were thrilling to the likes of Bird ‘n’ Magic and Pat Riley’s coaching, Eastern European hoops were witness to studs such as Valdis Valters, the immortal Arvydas Sabonis and mighty mastermind Alexander Gomelsky.
Richard the Lion-Hearted has been recast as Ralph the bravehearted: comes the casting news that Danny Huston, currently co-starring in Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood,” (you may also remember him from such films as “Clash of the Titans” and “Children of Men”) 
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.
