Huge in Turkey

Israel’s Nimrod Tishman is coming to University of Florida. In another Israel basketball-related piece, the Sacramento Bee has the story of whatever happened to the professional career of Team Israel’s Amit “Soft and Chunky” Tamir. In case you were wondering.

The just-created BallinEurope.com Weirdest Post of the Week award this week goes to a story entitled “Turkish Airlines wants Hidayet Türkoğlu” over at a site called OpEdNews.com. The stream-of-consciousness work speculates that Turkish Airlines will be hiring Turkoglu as a pitchman for special Turkey-to-Toronto routes.

From here, we learn that Turkoglu’s heroes “are some advertisers and broadcasters, too”; that “The White Shadow” was extremely popular in Turkey and help foster the country’s current love for the NBA; and something about basketball’s “alternative audience.”

Beyond the fanciful prose, however, there is a question of source. Has anyone heard about Turkoglu signing with Turkish Airlines? I can’t find a damn thing, but my Turkish is pretty rusty, which is to say non-existent…

In the ‘States, “eight college men” managed to pull off a fantastic double PR coup this weekend, earning the attention of both the Chicago Daily Herald and ESPN’s Sports Guy simply by … being loyal and boisterous basketball fans. Read these guys’ stories and try not to LOL – we dare ya.

From China comes the morbidly ironic story of cheating in that country’s “Dream League,” an association of basketball teams that limits players’ height to 1.88 meters. Who needs life-threatening performance enhancers when you can just bow your shoulders and bend your neck back to gain that vital edge?

From the Bloody Grievances Department are rants by Sasha Vujacic and Hamed Haddadi posted this week.

Sasha-of-the-Lakers tells a sordid tale of what appears to be a purely political move by Team Slovenia coaches and trainers to keep Vujacic off the team. The greater problem, it seems, is that Slovenia recklessly gambled with Vujacic’ physical well-being when team doctors inadequately addressed a reported knee injury. The announcement from head coach Jure Zdovc et al that Vujacic would not be participating with Slovenia in Eurobasket 2009 always seemed to be belying something. Political machinations and abrupt cutting aside, if half of what Vujacic claims is true, well, let’s just say that an early American reaction would be to ring up some attorneys…

Finally Team Iran’s Hamed Haddadi really let the Memphis Grizzlies have it, claiming the Grizz folks don’t trust his abilities and that he’s needlessly riding the bench.

Stated Haddadi emphatically to Iranian source Mehr News: “I want to play regularly for the Grizzlies; nevertheless, I will have to change my team now since I am a star of the team but sitting on the bench.”

Finally, DeadSpin.com tells of “Alex” in the article “The Confessions of an NBA Scorekeeper.” Warning: potentially depressing material contained within.

The Hong Kong based China Merchants Direct Investments and the Li Ka-shing Foundation have found an agreement with Euroleague Basketball to get a Euroleague Wildcard for the next season and start with a newly created team in the 2009/2010 Qualification phase. The Chinese companies, which have already taken a part in the newly created NBA China, are considering to put together a top-class Euroleague team right from the start as the talks are going into the direction of a 50 million USD budget.

The Li Ka Shing Foundation announced that it wants to nurture a culture of giving and to foster creativity, constructive engagement, and sustainability through supporting capacity empowerment focused projects. By the creation of a Euroleague team, they see a possibility to give young Chinese talent a possibility to compete with the best basketball teams in the world as the Chinese authorities prefer to see their players grow with the team values of European basketball over the individualistic approach of the NBA.

Former National team coach Jonas Kazlauskas is rumored to take over the team as head coach together with a staff built around the best talent developers in Europe and China. Several of the most promising Chinese prospects including Chen Jianhua and the recent Nike Hoop Summit invitee Zhang Dayu will be with the team and the addition of Yi Jianlian from the New Jersey Nets is heavily considered. The core of the team will however be built around Euroleague veterans and former CBA players from China.

The team will be based in Paris to get the support from the 450,000 Chinese natives living in the Ile-de-France region and the games will be played in the 15,000 seat Palais Omnisports Paris-Bercy. Li Ka Shing is very optimistic about his investment and a non-qualification for the regular season is not considered right now. However, the 11th richest man in the World assured that he has a different project in his pockets for the case that the new team would not reach the 24 qualified teams.

The day started with the game between Spain and Croatia. And Spain came up with a nice 13-point win over a Croatian team that lost the game already in the first quarter where the Spanish built their lead to qualify for the semis. What may be a bit surprising is the fact that Aito still prefers Rudy and Ricky to Navarro and Calderon in the guard rotation. The Barcelona returner has played a disappointing tournament so far but his scoring is absolutely needed if Spain wants to go for a medal.

Lithuania won over China, ending the tournament for Yao Ming and his friends. This elimination was felt to be a big disappointment for China. In reports I read about the game, Chinese spectators left the arena before the end of the game because they saw no possibility of winning this one; Chinese media were very harsh with Yao Ming and coach Kazlauskas because of the “non-development” over four years ago, when China was also eliminated in the final eight. Additionally, taking Yao Ming out in the second half in the last group game against Greece was also heavily criticized, because an eventual win over Greece would have given China a virtual 5/6th place, which would have been an improvement.

USA had to battle for 19 minutes in order to break Australia in the third quarterfinal. A run in the last minute of the 2nd quarter and another three-point festival to start the second half was enough to get the needed advantage over the Boomers. The three-point shooting was not there at the beginning, but Team USA improved over the game to finish with a proper 41% team shooting from behind the arc. For Australia, it was once again young Pat Mills as top scorer with 20 points.

And then there was the only thriller of the day: Argentina versus Greece. And I saw a second half of total beauty with a frustrating ending. At two points behind with eight seconds to go, it was Vassilis Spanoulis who had the shot of the game but his three-point attempt only hit the rim. I was surprised that there was no other option in the Greek playbook than just attempting a “normal” three-point shot, and so the game ended a bit abruptly. But in the minutes prior, Argentina, with Carlos Delfino great in the money time, and Greece were going for some basketball beauties.

So now, we will see Argentina face Team USA in the semis in an awaited duel, while Spain will play against Lithuania. While in the first game, Coach K’s guys are the favorites, it’s a bit tighter in game 2. But I think that Lithuania is going to win this one because of the above-mentioned situation in the Spanish backcourt.

• It has nothing to do with the Olympics, but the Suns deny that they have signed a deal with Goran Dragic. The summer story continues…
• I did not see a lot of action yesterday but everybody told me about this play
• How to find a basketball ticket in Beijing. It’s not really legal (in Europe), that’s why Reuters shows it on TV
• Lithuanian NT coach Ramunas Butautas speaks about the Olympic Courage
• If you watched Croatia-Argentina, you could see that Marko Popovic got hurt during the game. There is nothing official yet but it looks like the Games are over for him…
• Steffen Hamann told us in his Blog on the official ALBA Berlin page that assistant coach Hansi Gnad nearly got hit by a spotlight that fell down for the roof of the Basketball Arena during a practice.
• A quick look at the current standings of the BallinEurope Fantasy League for the Olympic Games. Our French friend Eric is up, just in front of myself. A bad night of both Zoran Planinic and Wang ZhiZhi put me behind. But I will come back.

• The US Blogger scene is discovering the Lithuanian fans. And they win big time when it comes to creativity against the other nations that have arrived in Beijing.
• Talking about Lithuanian fans, their most known fan Sekla has also traveled to China.
• For the German speaking people, some NT players and staff members are blogging from Beijing. For those, who don’t understand, they can just watch the pictures.
• Staying with Germany, Dirk Nowitzki was going for some fun when talking about the upcoming game against Spain which will be played at 9 o’clock in the morning local time: On Thursday against Spain we are playing at 9 AM. This is normal, but only if you are playing on U20 tournament for place somewhere around 25th.
• Kobe Bryant thought that he should be funny too and said that he did not dunk five times in a game since High School after the China blowout. To be honest, I don’t think that this will happen again during the tournament.
• Team USA was visiting the Great Wall. Chris Bosh considered it as a “great workout“
• Did you know that the nickname of the Lithuanian forward Linas Kleiza was “Seksas”. Well the appearance of videos on youtube with Kleiza’s best plays of the opener with Right Said Fred’s “I’m too sexy” in the background just confirmed it.
• After the Washington Post revealed how LeBron James was greeting George Bush (found on TrueHoop), here you can see how Spanish Tennis Legend Rafael Nadal greets his royal highness Prince Felipe of Spain during the Olympic basketball tournament.

For years now, Team USA has tried to recover and win the gold medal to bring Olympic success back to the United States. And even despite some big wins in the preparation, the players don’t say that the Gold Medal is their goal. This is a pretty different approach for a basketball nation that until now always considered themselves as the favorites in any competition in which they participated. I really hope that the players mean this seriously and don’t take the victory for granted. If not, they may end up like this:

Still, the main favorite for many is Spain. The team built around Pau Gasol is undefeated since the loss in  Eurobasket 2007 and has high high hopes for Beijing. The current world champions have some similarities with Team USA as they are also destroying their opponents in preparation: Portugal (+49), Russia (+35), Lithuania (+25) or Argentina (+25) had no chance against the Reds, and I’m not even talking about their results against Latvia and Hungary. For the fans, it is a similar situation, as 84% think that Spain wins a medal and even 44.5% are going for the gold medal. For Team USA, 86% of voters think that the gold medal will be the result. So for all the Spanish fans, don’t overestimate your team and you better remember this clip below as not happening again:

The only team among the favorites that has faced some real competition so far is Greece. As they had to go through the Olympic Qualifying Tournament, the guys around Papaloukas and Diamantidis showed during the days in Athens that they are ready to go for the ultimate challenge of this generation. And they have the ultimate weapon back to beat Team USA in Sofoclis Schortsanitis. By watching the highlight clip from the Athens tournament, the Greeks don’t look less impressive than Team USA or Spain at the moment:

Of course, there are other candidates to win a medal, but these three teams look for me like the favorites at the moment. Australia, Argentina and Lithuania are legit candidates for a semifinal spot, while Germany and Croatia may be a bit behind. And then there is of course the Chinese host, but they will start directly the tournament against the USA and will probably know their real level right there.

And well, I nearly forgot to mention them, and I guess a lot of other people have the same reaction. There is a current European champion participating in the tournament: Russia. Don’t be surprised if they come up with a huge tournament and improving throughout the days in China.

So why is the Euroleague not hardly trying to enter this emerging market like finance people call it. Ok, there were the CBA-Euroleague games that have been played before the regular season but Euroleague fans did care as much about these games than NBA fans cared about the NBA Europe Live Tour.

So why not bring in a Chinese player to a Euroleague team. I mean, the Euroleague could only take profit out of this, the games would be televised in Far East and followed by a whole nation. Currently, the Chinese that play abroad are only heading to the United States. But why not to Europe? Are they any good enough? Or does the Chinese government prefer to use them as spy in the United States?

I am totally in favor of such a move, by the way, what happened to Wang Zhi Zhi? However, seeing the Euroleague website crash in normal game days and Lithuanians trust fan votings, I guess, the idea is not that good anymore if I want to follow the best league in Europe easily at home.

“I think that European teams have a couple of different styles,” he said. “Some, like those from Greece, play good organized games, using the full shot clock of 24 seconds. You have to play a lot of attention on defense, because they keep moving the ball until they find the best chance to take a shot. Some other teams, like Slovenia, play more like a U.S. team. They play very physical and try to score as much as they can. And France, I don’t know much about except they left a big impression on me in 2000 when Antoine Rigaudeau made six three-point shots in a row to beat us.”

By the way – I just watched the game Team China vs. CSKA Mosow. Talking about organized games you have to mention Teo Papaloukas who got some good offers from some NBA teams like the Lakers this summer but stayed with CSKA – now wearing Steve Nash’s new signature sneaker.

So the Euroleague is involved with the NBA. What’s next? You are right – China! The Euroleague will start a cooperation with the Chinese Basketball Federation for the first time this year. The event will be held in China and is officially called the CBA-Euroleague Challenge 2007.

Teams like Team China, Sydney Kings, CSKA Moscow and Benetton Basket Tamoil will play each other at the newly built Kunshan Stadium.

The new owner of all Euroleague games, Eurosport, will cover all the games  starting September 30th.

Eurosport 2 will televise from China to 43 European countries three of the games between Team China, Sydney Kings, CSKA Moscow and Benetton Basket Tamoil on Sunday, September 30 and Monday, October 1. On Sunday, September 30, Eurosport 2 will broadcast the CSKA Moscow vs. Sydney Kings game and put Benetton Basket Tamoil vs. Team China on tape-delay. On Monday, October 1, Eurosport 2 will show CSKA Moscow vs. Team China live.

What a great chance to check out the Euroleague teams as well as the Chinese NBA Stars.