Ball in Europe – European Basketball Blog

A notable for Team Hungary in Eurobasket 2009 and former PAOK player Zoltán Horváth has died from injuries suffered in a car crash yesterday. He was 30.

After spending most of his career in Hungary’s domestic league, Horváth got with PAOK for the 2008-09 season, but had been playing this season with Falco KC Szombathely. Horváth put up huge numbers of 21.3 points and 10.4 rebounds per game in the Hungarian league this year.

In Eurobasket 2009, the big guy helped the surprising Magyars to an impressive showing in the tournament, helping them reach Division A for 2010 with a twelve-point, nine-rebound effort against Estonia in the competition’s final match.

Condolences and messages are requested to be left at the team’s Facebook page.

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Filling the big shoes of displaced head coach Jasmin Repesa when Croatia hits the court for the 2010 FIBA World Championship will be Josip Vrankovic. Vrankovic had served as the coach of Croatia’s “Team B” in international competition in addition to (briefly and contentiously) helming Cibona Zagreb in 2007.

As a long-time player with Team Croatia, Vrankovic was with the team in Atlanta for the 1996 World Games and played at Eurobasket 2001 in the soon-to-become familiar country of Turkey.

Though this move had been expected for nearly two weeks, the decision was only officially announced yesterday. FIBA press release follows the break.

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Ivkovic: "Košarkaškog saveza Srbije skandalozni"

Maybe something was lost in the translation, but the English-language version of the Serbian edition of Blic reports that Team Serbia coach Dusan Ivkovic and all-time great Vlade Divac have leveled some serious verbal fireworks in the direction of the national association.

Today at Blic.rs, Serbia Basketball Association honorary president Bora Stankovic fires back at Ivkovic and, by association Divac, who reportedly backed up the coach on his assessment of “scandalous relations” within the group leadership.

Calling the comments “laughable and sad,” Stankovic assures that Ivkovic’ “accusations simply don’t stand” while defending the record with “the people at the Association must be doing something right. Especially now, when Serbia, a nation which got its independence as recently as two years ago, is back on the European basketball map.”

Stankovic went on the deflect the blame for what Ivkovic and Divac see as problematic onto the individual Serbian professional basketball clubs.

On his part, Divac is reported to have stated that “u Savezu sede neradnici,” a phrase the Blic folks translated as “the Union are slackers.” (Can a Serbian speaker confirm this phraseology…?)

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Ball in Europe contributor Francesco Cappelletti wraps Eurobasket 2009 with little surprise and a long view on the future of Europe’s premiere national basketball programs. Today, analysis on the tournament’s top four finishers.

It was simply a result that we could take for granted: Spain at the top of Europe, with silver medalist Serbia beaten by 22 points in the Eurobasket final, almost the same gap between Scariolo’s boys and other “pretenders” such as France (who lost to Spain in the quarterfinals, 86-66) and Greece (82-64 losers to Spain in the semifinals) were supposed to be.
It was a Eurobasket in some ways boring, featuring little advancement from the tactical perspective, with many teams focused on the abused pick-and-roll play, few squads able to run, and one team (Spain, who else?) very, very distanced from the other national teams, even just in terms of a talent base that is embarrassing to compare.

Today, with Eurobasket behind us, a look at what national teams are lacking, where they have failed, and are the scenes set for the future.

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The coach

Presenting yourrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr BallinEurope Alternate EuroBasket 2009 All-Tournament Team!

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If this were America, i’d be searching for hyperbole right now, calling the 2009 edition of Team Spain the greatest Spanish team ever, the greatest European team since dissolution of the Soviet Union, the greatest non-USA squad ever assembled … but instead, BallInEurope humbly offers congratulations to the fantastic Spaniards for finally achieving Eurobasket gold.

“It’s going to be waaaaaaaay closer than people think,” proclaimed this blog yesterday in predicting the outcome of the Spain-Serbia final of last night, but damn was it not. Spain finished off the dynamic and surprisingly polished youngsters of Serbia early — not quite as early as those USSR teams in the 70s and 80s (those guys often had the final wrapped up before the tournament started), mind you, but it was a quick death for Serbia.

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“Let’s be realistic. Spain is a great team” – Nikolas Zisis, Greece

How hopeful?

That’s the lead quote over at the Eurobasket 2009 official site, and it’s good enough to lead here at BallinEurope.com as well on the morning of the final game. Firstly, congratulations to Spain and Serbia for getting into the final game after a seriously hard-fought tournament.

And now the big question: Can Serbia beat the prospective champs? The gut reaction is, of course, “no way, man. The youngest team in all of Eurobasket overcoming a team of world-class all-star level household names? Dream on.” On the other hand, as supporters of Team Greece and Team Spain itself already know from as “far” back as Euroleague 2007 that, well, upsets do happen in this tournament.

So how can the upstarts overcome the Spaniards? Glad i asked. Serbia can win tonight if…

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This tournament just keeps getting better and better. Whether you dig the comeback or prefer a back-and-forth tug of war, Eurobasket 2009 had basketball lovers all smiles yesterday with a pair of fantastic contests truly reflecting the excellence of this field. And today there’s *four* more games? Nice.

Jumping right in, then…

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Whoa, a bit too much Pau Gasol for Team France last night, eh? Now that was the Spain everybody’s been wanting to see, if only as an object to hate on. And congratulations to Serbia as well, for just playing a wonderful game in basically brushing aside Russia; i’ve not been so happy being wrong in a long time.

Look out, they're coming...

As far tonight’s games, the BiE fearless predictions say Turkey and Slovenia advance. Of course, as some readers suggest, that means these 5-1 teams will be going down…

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Reason #3

With all due respect to Turkey and Slovenia, two teams which have often gotten the short of the stick in the BiE fearless prediction series in Eurobasket 2009, what fun is making picks if you don’t mix in some upsets? And taking France to win the tournament right now is quite the stretch, for two reasons: 1) the sportsbook has Les Bleus as 2/1 underdogs in this game, and 2) for France to win Eurobasket gold, they’ll have to have run the table.

But let’s take these games one at a time, as the jockspeak cliché goes. The BiE fearless prediction has France over Spain, for the following reasons:

• Team Spain may have looked good – really good – last night in beating Poland, 90-68, but, um, gee, it’s Poland. And by mercilessly pouring it on in the late-third and fourth quarters against the overmatched Poles, the once-again swaggeringly cocky Spain will surely invoke the wrath of the basketball gods for unsportsmanlike play.

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