BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

With relations between Western powers and Iran currently shaky at best, you’d figure few Europeans willing to take employment in the Moslem country – but don’t count Memi Becirovic, former coach of Slovenia youth teams, Team Slovenia’s 2010 FIBA World Championship entry and Unicaja Malaga, among ‘em. Becirovic will head up the Middle East country’s squad beginning in April; Team Iran experienced a bit of a backslide in 2011, when the side could not threepeat its run of biennial FIBA Asia Championships.

Official story from FIBA follows.

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Check out the fashion Team Britain’s Pops Mensah-Bonsu sported in a Eurochallenge game for Beşiktaş Milangaz against BK Pardubice. Perhaps Pops forgot his Abdul-Jabbar goggles or there was a problem with the lighting … in any case, the Eagles won the game, 78-70, for its seventh consecutive victory in the competition.

As a tweet from Mensah-Bonsu’s former club CSKA Moscow rhetorically asks, “How does he score?”

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First Allen Iverson, then Deron Williams, now Adam Morrison. The former Zag first suited up for Beşiktaş Milangaz yesterday after landing that club’s seemingly mandatory reserved roster spot for an NBA name player. Morrison only saw less than 10 minutes of action in his new side’s 85-75 victory at Antalya, going for two points and two rebounds in that span.

Morrison began his 2011-12 season with Red Star Belgrade (a.k.a. Crvena Zvezda Beograd), with whom he notably achieved a 15.5 ppg average on just under 48% overall shooting in Adriatic League play – highlighted by his 30-point explosion against Union Olimpija – while winning over Red Star fans’ hearts.

No video appears readily available for post at the present moment, but below runs a recent upload from YouTube user CosmicEgg88 reminding us that Seattle is still pining for Morrison – and professional basketball for that matter…

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For those into NBA Draft-mongering or the youth basketball scene in general and/or longtime BallinEurope readers, Christophe and his excellently informative website European Prospects need no introduction. As a founding father of this website and a writer for various print publications, Christophe is now a well-known authority in youth ‘ball circles.

Christophe tipped off 2012 by releasing EuropeanProspects.com – 2011: The Year in Review, an ebook in the Amazon Kindle format. This 80-plus (or 269K, if you prefer) virtual tome promises to cover “all the main stories from the past 12 months. You will get scouting reports on all the main European Basketball prospects that have competed in 2011, including reports from the FIBA U19 World Championship, the FIBA U16 and U18 European Championships, the Adidas Eurocamp, the Nike Junior Invitational Tournament and the Nike Hoop Summit.”

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In hopes of capitalizing on recent success in FIBA tournament play, the burgeoning women’s basketball program in Armenia may be able to add a pair of college ballers from the diaspora currently enjoying some success in the U.S. in the college ranks.

Kate Kevorken is playing her senior year with the University of Nevada, producing nicely for the Wolfpack after cracking the starting lineup in her second season with the program. The two guard bagged her first Western Athletic Conference player of the week award on December 19 thanks to a 25-point (including the game-winner), 11-rebound show against Oregon. Ten days later, “The Encyclopedia” broke her personal scoring mark with 27 points in a losing effort to Mississippi State.

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Just days ago, Peja Stojakovic appeared to be a viable free agent for an NBA team with roster holes, a still-deadly long-range assassin at the age of 34, a 19-year veteran with gas enough in the tank for late-game daggers and smart D, a prototypical European baller with an American championship pedigree. “Couldn’t he drain a few 3s for a contender?” rhetorically asked hoops sage Bill Simmons last Friday.

Alas, it was not to be. The Serbian sharpshooter will not be part of the Dallas Mavericks’ quest to repeat as NBA champions, announcing his retirement from professional basketball late Monday night. Citing injuries to his neck and back, Stojakovic decided his physical struggles were “a wakeup call” for him to leave the game at this point.

On the plus side, Peja has the privilege of going out on top, in 2011 not only topping his seeming long-time personal rivals the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA playoffs, but also finally earning the ring which had eluded him for a dozen seasons ‘Stateside.

Today BallinEurope pays tribute to the gold-medal winning, NBA title having, future FIBA Hall of Fame nod achieving legend in the traditional fashion … let’s go to the ‘Tube!

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One hot-button topic in the European basketball world got a bit more heated yesterday: Word has it that The Azerbaijan Basketball Federation has opened talks that would install American-born players Jaycee Carroll and Nik Caner-Medley on the men’s national team in preparation for Eurobasket qualifiers.

Twitter tremors on the acquisitions – and let’s just call them acquisitions, shall we? It’s just business, after all – are still occurring, but the overriding sentiment only with an interesting bit of information was perhaps best summed up by Sportando’s tweet:

Jaycee Carroll has the same agent as Nik Caner-Medley who got as well passport from Azerbaijan. Europe, where fake passports happen.

As for BallinEurope, yes, we’re addressing the topic. Enrico Cellini weighs in on the subject below.

Suppose you are the head of a basketball federation in a tiny state with little tradition in the sport and must prepare for the Eurobasket 2013 qualification round. You would:

A) Hire a foreign coach with long European Basketball resume;

B) Invest in young players that could turn out to be good in the future; or

C) Just do like everyone else and grant national passports to American players so they can play in your national team.

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BallinEurope just loves season- and year-ending polls, and every December FIBA Europe offers hoops devotees the opportunity to participate in the naming the Continent’s Players of The Year. And while the winner of the award for 2011 – a.k.a. the Year of Dirk – is surely a no-brainer, the FIBA ballot calls for electors to award a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place vote from among 10 nominees; BiE is finding that no. 3 spot a real mind-bender. If someone can provide a nice salient argument for the final spot, that person will have BiE’s undying admiration.

The process of elimination went the following way, in reverse order of finish, and garnishing with highlight clips.

10. Dimitris Diamantidis, Panathinaikos. Yes, Double-D was the Euroleague MVP and the Euroleague Final Four MVP for 2010-11. Yes, he thus established himself as one of the five or six greatest of the EL modern era. But Diamantidis did not play any international ball, whereas all other nine nominees participated in Eurobasket 2011 and most where instrumental to their team’s successes. Dimitris simply has the shortest CV of a very talented ten.

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Deron who?

Okay, so BallinEurope wouldn’t go that far; after all, we’re talking about a player of retired-jersey status here. Regardless, Beşiktaş Milangaz began the post-Deron Williams Era with a 77-75 win at Armia in FIBA Eurochallenge play, thanks to a David Hawkins jumper in the waning seconds…

Official FIBA writeup follows.

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Could Beşiktaş finally have found the elusive big man the Eagles’ management has pretty much been seeking since signing Deron Williams? Turkey-based Kartal Basket reports this afternoon that a deal has been struck between the TBL team and locked-out New Jersey Net Brook Lopez and will be officially announced within the next two days.

A number of reports in recent days had the Beşiktaş search linked with names like Kevin Love, Luol Deng, Lamar Odom, Nene and Marcin Gortat, but Lopez made for reportedly a somewhat less expensive option than Odom or Gortat, for example.

Lopez went for 20.4 points and 6.0 rebounds per game with the New Jersey Nets last season.

And if you’re keeping score at home, the refugees from Nets land playing in Europe increases: After Williams and (prospectively) Lopez, there are Jordan Farmar (with Maccabi Tel Aviv), Sasha Vujacic (Anadolu Efes), Mario West (Scaligera Basket Verona), Sundiata Gaines (BC Armia) and Bojan Bogdanovic (Fenerbahçe Ülker; and okay, BiE realizes Bogdanovic isn’t technically a refugee, but he may be a Net someday).

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