Ball in Europe, the European Basketball Blog

Not as big as Partizan

Anyone who has seen (or much better yet, witnessed live) a game at Pionir Arena in Belgrade knows that, all things considered, the Serbia basketball hall is among the world’s very top spots to see a game. So on March 30th, the Partizan faithful will be arriving at Pionir in droves to witness their Black-and-Whites welcoming … 50 Cent?

Serving as confirmation that basketball is indeed bigger than hip hop in Serbia’s capital, Partizan representatives have announced that rapper 50 Cent’s show scheduled for the evening has now been switched to the basketball venue; Partizan will host Maccabi Tel Aviv in their game three quarterfinal match at the bigger Belgrade Arena.

Partizan added to its record-breaking attendance record of last season by setting a new mark for Euroleague attendance at Belgrade Arena in the 2009-10 quarterfinals when 22,567 came to witness the Serbian side take on Panathinaikos on the road to the latter’s eventual championship:

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Lalić to the rescue!

Ball in Europe doesn’t know if the smoke is clearing for beleaguered Union Olimpija, but at least yesterday’s announcement of the Jure Lalić signing provides some seed for optimism. The 24-year-old Croatian had been playing for EuroCup team Spirou Charleroi.

Much more than a single youth player, proverbial tremendous upside or no, will be required to pull this plunging club out of the tailspin, though. Off the court, the distractions are plentiful, with European and American players quitting the team while alleging non-payment by the club. Essentially, all of Olimpija’s remaining name players – Sašo Ožbolt, Vlado Ilievski, Edin Bavčić, Gašper Vidmar and Nemanja Aleksandrov – charged exactly the same thing last week, holding a player strike. When finally coerced back into action, these five were among seven players who saw action in Sunday’s 85-59 thumping of Cibona Zagreb.

(Now if that ain’t a message to management, BiE doesn’t know what is. What was it that M.J. said? “I didn’t see organizations playing with the flu in Utah“?)

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They’re breaking out the superlatives today over at the ACB’s official website, full in the afterglow of a weekend’s worth of mostly tight games or, as writer Malo de Molina put it, “¡Qué jornada!”

When the dust settled, Real Madrid (20-5) had beaten fourth-place Valencia (16-9) and wrested second place from slipping Caja Laboral Baskonia (20-5), who suffered a shocking 74-58 loss to no. 6 Asefa Estudiantes (13-12).

Cajasol (ranked 5th, 15-10) and giant-killers Gran Canaria 2014 (8th, 12-13) continued their upward trend with wins over Valladolid (10th, 11-14) and Suzuki Manresa (11th, 11-14), respectively. Xacobeo Blu:sens (17th, 8-17) and DKV Joventut (9th, 12-13) managed to snap losing streaks, the latter scoring its first win under coach Pepu Hernandez.

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Look out, upcoming Olympiacos opponents: Big Sofo is just starting to heat up. After a marginal season in Euroleague play up in the early going (BiE is blaming it on that H1N1 the big man contracted in the autumn), Sofoklis Schortsanitis turned in his peak Euroleague performance of 2009-10 a week and a half ago, going for 19 points in just 18 minutes of playing time (read: “time spent dominating the paint”) against helpless Baskonia.

This weekend, the Red chased up his humdrum 2-of-6 showing in the BC Khimki game by taking the ESAKE All-Star Game MVP award with statistics insane even for such an exhibition: Would you believe 42 points of 19-of-21 shooting, including 3-of-5 on threes and a perfect 16-of-16 from within the arc?

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It’s not that BallinEurope is obsessed with both Bill Simmons and Rubio-to-Minnesota, but … all right, i am obsessed with both Bill Simmons and Rubio-to-Minnesota. Still, when BiE finally got around to reading this week’s patented “Mailbag” column only to see no. 1 best-selling author The Sports Guy take an incorrect swipe at the poster boy for European basketball’s future on the international stage, well, BiE had to come to the defense of Rubio, especially since the sparring partner in this debate will never actually see this column, heh heh.

The topic was, as stated, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ future. A frustrated fan sought empathy from Simmons in a pleading email that dissected a bit of the infamous 50% season-ticket discount the Wolves are pitching which BiE had a look at last week.

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Coach Ivanovic may now exhale

Better late than never (totally BiE’s fault, let me tell you) comes Ball in Europe’s dispatch from Francesco Cappelletti rounding up the week that was in Euroleague basketball. For your amusement and edification, Francesco discusses, among other topics, the Terrell McIntyre Backup Curse, which teams should sweep into the Final Four, why Maccabi Tel Aviv is so good in 2009-10 and why Cibona Zagreb should be awesome in 2010-11.

Thrilling night
When a Bojan Bogdanovic-less Cibona Zagreb was up 72-58 with three minutes to go, Caja Laboral’s nightmare was very close to become reality. Then, a 17-2 run handled by Marcelinho Huertas turned the lights out for an overtime everyone knew would not be balanced at all. Baskonia scored 24 points in five minutes to ensure a gap BC Khimki couldn’t fill. With radio and voices running, the 22 point-margin BC Khimki had over Olympiacos to begin the fourth quarter, eventually becoming a 96-83 final score, was insufficient to reach second place in Group H.

Dusko Ivanovic can breathe again now, as his team qualified for the playoffs. But we have to thank Cibona, which was able to play their game even after elimination, just for the love of the game.

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Mentally battered and otherwise worked over since this morning’s 4am True Hoop live blogging, BallinEurope nevertheless wanted to post *something* with which the loyal readers might waste some time on Saturday.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, the token YouTube video highlight collection post of the day.

The Euroleague Top 10 Plays of the Week clip was again dutifully uploaded onto the ‘Tube and so runs below the break. Is Ricky in it? Yes, and Pops is, too, plus an awesome Viktor Khyrapa block that BiE *knew* would be in here as soon as it happened, awesome three-way passing work by Partizan, and Linas Kleiza creating one of the greatest highlights off a missed free throw ever.

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Pops!

Apparently, however, no one told the Muscovite home crowd, who were as stoked for this contest as any game that truly “counts.” And one CSKA player in particular didn’t get the memo.

The highlight clip runs below the break. Some nice shock-and-awe moments to look out for include an awesome block by Viktor Khryapa at 0.30 or so to stifle a fast-break opportunity and Travis Watson’s open JAM for one of Kaunas’ last gasps at 0.54, but the show was stolen by that guy wearing only POPS on his jersey’s back: See the sweet alley oop finished off at about 1.08, Mensah-Bonsu throwing it down again just (YouTube-measured) a few seconds later, and the serious poster shot on the breakaway at about 2.03. Oh, and a “not in my дом” block at about 2.23.

Final score: CSKA 84, Zalgiris 71. Mensah-Bonsu’s final line: 19 points on 8-of-12 shooting, eight rebounds and an index ranking of 23. And onto the final eight marches the Red Army…

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Nice of the Euroleague to stack up nearly every game in the last round of the Top 16 on one night, eh? Sheesh, this is worse (or better, depending on viewpoint) than the weekend following the All-Star Game in the NBA. Of the seven games on the slate, six will still help shape the final eight field; the sole “pride game” tonight will be the Montepaschi Siena-Efes Pilsen match in Italy. Officially-derived possibilities for the final eight may be found at the Euroleague website.

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Langford: He upon whom the Boss' hopes are pinned

Hello everybody, greetings from the Euroleague Basketball headquarters! This is Javier Gancedo of Euroleague.net, in what possibly will be my last SportingBet Fantasy Challenge column this season.

If you want to keep me on the page in the fantasy off-season, make some noise! Start a riot! Go to Budapest and demonstrate in front of Os Davis’ home, wherever it is! Just kidding: It has been a pleasure to give you my impressions on the game. It has been a terrific fantasy season, after all, I just hope you enjoyed reading this column as much as I did writing it.

So the Top 16 comes to an end this week, which means the game will be over on Thursday. On one hand, I can’t complain – no more waiting until 3am to open the game after a long Euroleague/Eurocup week – but on the other hand … of course, I’ll miss it. Still, with one week to go I have a chance to win the BallinEurope Invitational Challenge private league…

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