BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

It’s about time we got a fresh Pops Mensah-Bonsu highlight video … On the happy occasion of Pops’ return to European courts with Cajasol Sevilla for the final six games of the season, the Liga Endesa official website reminds us of Pops’ great moments on Spanish hardwood during stints with CB Granada and DKV Joventut Badalona in 2008.

The BallinEurope fave hasn’t seen action since the summer due to a knee injury taking him out of the 2012 Olympic Games just after finishing 2012-13 in fantastic fashion with Beşiktaş.

Video of representative hops by Pops (plus the occasional nice play on defense) runs below…

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Anyone else ready for London? The Euroleague front office and PR folks are closer today with the release of the official Final Four logo – not to mention a new promotional spot. And here it is:

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Right, then. Start calling up that calendar for October because the NBA has announced that two teams from the big league will be coming to Europe (presumably as part of the 2014 NBA Europe Live tour), with another six heading to other continents. From the NBA and Associated Press, the schedule looks like the following.

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Less than a year after endless wrangling with FIBA and the International Olympic Committee to get Team Britain into the 2012 Olympic Games, governing body UK Sport seems fit to impart some slashing of the national basketball budget – this despite pressure from FIBA going into the London Games that an automatic bid for the men’s national team would be granted only with assurances that British basketball had some viable future.

An eleventh-hour debate on the basketball-funding question is slated for tonight and will be led by Conservative Party MP Stephen Mosley; an online petition created by Sam Neter of Britian-based Hoops Fix self-explanatorily called “Get UK Sport to Fund British Basketball” has over 11,650 “signatures” as of this writing.

Perhaps no one is taking the upcoming cuts more seriously than Chicago Bulls/Team Britain star Luol Deng, however. Deng today fired off a 1½-page open letter to British prime minister David Cameron in hopes of essentially saving the national program in the runup to the 2016 Olympics; the just-this-side-of-vitriolic text runs below.

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From Britain, Sam Chadwick brings us a wrapup of BBL action over a weekend which saw the BBL Championship continue while the Glasgow Rocks and Manchester Giants battled it out to advance to the BBL Cup Quarter Finals…

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Along with many other domestic leagues, Britain’s BBL is underway, and BallinEurope’s agent over there/ProspectsInEurope editor Sam Chadwick rounds things up for us.

Welcome to the first British Basketball League Wrap of the 2012/13 season with a nice new lay-out. Some of you may have noticed newcomers to the league Manchester Giants as well as recently names Surrey Heat and London Lions; these two franchises take on from The Guildford Heat and MK Lions. The changes have come about for different reasons, as the Heat wanted to expand their fan base across Surrey while the Lions failed to secure a venue in Milton Keynes and were presented with an opportunity to move to the country’s capital.

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BallinEurope will have something on the marquee Olympic basketball games – namely, Team USA vs. Argentina and Spain vs. Brazil – later today, but once again wanted to post the Official Fearless Predictions™ before early games tip off.

Having already clinched the top spot in Group B, Russia will likely go deep into the bench, and, whoa is that bench deep indeed. BiE says resting Russia nips Australia in the teams’ third meeting of the summer. The oddsmakers give Russia a 7½ point handicap for this one; the final result may even be closer. On paper.

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Just enough time to get in some Official Fearless Predictions™ this morning … note that BallinEurope is at 12-0 through two days of Olympic competition. Note, too, that only serious homers and lobotomized octopi should be less than 11-1 at this point anyway, depending on the person/being’s choice for the Argentina-France game.

So here goes on a day with what should be a couple of fair battles and a bunch of blowouts: Lithuania over France (still running with this pick); Australia over China; Argentina over Tunisia; Russia over Brazil in today’s match of the day; Spain over Britain; and Team USA over Nigeria.

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And now, round two. Or maybe that should be “round B.” With BallinEurope having (sort of) Fearlessly Predicted the entries for the 2012 Olympic basketball knockout stage from Group A, it’s onto the Official Fearless Predictions™ for Group B – and we’ll do this one from the bottom up.

BallinEurope's upset specialists: Team Britain...

Damn right BiE’s going there, taking Team Britain to advance for purely selfish reasons: BiE wants the European sweep. BiE supports the fledgling program they’re trying to maintain on the Isle where basketball is a low (*low*) priority in sports fans’ hearts. BiE loves the proverbial pluckiness, the dogged daring, Luol Deng and Pops Mensah-Bonsu. And because BiE wants the highlight YouTube clip potential of a USA-Britain Olympic tournament game.

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A shout out this morning to Britain-based HoopsFix and “hardworking 6’5” 187 lb. versatile small forward” Peter Grumble for tipping BallinEurope off to a big play from Ryan Richards, currently competing for the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Summer League.

For more on Richards, click below the break, but now, the clip.

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