With the informal Turkish national fight song “Oniki Dev Adam” getting lots of media play thanks to the stirring renditions performed by hometown crowds at the 2010 FIBA World Championship, BallinEurope thought it would be a good time to give props to Lithuania’s own popular sports anthem.
Sep
5
FIBA World Championship semi-finals: Of Lithuanian fight songs and Fearless Predictions™
Sep
6
How it feels to be a Lithuanian fan
Last Tuesday in the 2010 FIBA World Championship, Team Lithuania completed a huge comeback to defeat the heavily-favored Spain 76-73 – just another win on the way to the tournament round, albeit an exceedingly exciting one, right? Wrong.
BallinEurope’s man in Lithuania, known in this space since last year’s LKL championship series insanity as Y., states that the Spain game meant a heck of a lot more for his country, the basketball-maddest in Europe if not the world. For Y. and his countrymen going into an elimination game with Argentina tonight, this edition of Team Lithuania is already heroic.
“Basketball is just a game, after all” – I remember reading this in Lithuanian media once. And I’m always thinking about it, about how that phrase really fits in our country.
In places other than Kaunas games are played in half-empty arenas, LKL mid-level games get astonishing lows in TV ratings, and our top players such as Šarūnas Jasikevičius more often opted out to rest in the summer rather than play for our National Team while, in comparison, other top teams like Spain always enjoy most of their roster intact.
“True,” I thought once, “we are not as mad about basketball as we would like to be.”
Sep
9
Perovic: No Gasol is the difference for Spain
Perovic: No Gasol, no easy win for Spain
When Serbia and Spain meet tonight to determine which of the European powers will advance to the 2010 FIBA World Championship final four, it will mark the third time the squads meet in one year – in fact, it’s been 366 days since the relatively unheralded young Serbs surprised the sluggish Spaniards in their Eurobasket 2009 opening game.
And the two Eurobasket 2009 games in which the teams faced off is hardly history: 17 of the 24 players on the teams’ rosters have returned for this tournament. It is, however, one of Team Spain’s two absentees that will make the difference in the rubber match tonight, in Kosta Perovic’s opinion: Pau Gasol.
Sep
2
Tuesday cigarettes: FIBA World Championship smokin’
For longtime readers of BallinEurope, here’s a brief trip down Memory Lane … we’ll call these “Tuesday cigarettes,” a collection of quotes, links and YouTubes (especially YouTubes) focused on the 2010 FIBA World Championship. Inhale and enjoy!
• Team Russia head coach David Blatt, who “was one of those kids crying when the American team lost the game in the Olympics when [Sergei] Belov made the shot at the end after the three replays,” weighs in on the 1972 Olympics at True Hoop … and reaches a surprising conclusion.
Sep
2
BallinEurope live chats, makes more Fearless Predictions™
From the Shameless Self-Promotion Department, BallinEurope reminds readers to represent along with yours truly in the Daily Dime Live chatroom over at ESPN.com tonight starting at 5pm CET (11am EST).
As for the games themselves, Official BallinEurope Fearless Predictions™ follow… Continue Reading…
Sep
4
“Twelve Giant Men”: Origins and brief history
Play it again, Hedo!
For those wondering about that lustily-belted, catchy fight song the Turkish fans serenaded at Team France pretty much throughout the second half in the “Eighth Finals” game of the 2010 FIBA World Championship, BallinEurope’s got some answers.
The song is entitled “Oniki dev adam” (or “Twelve Giant Men”) and was originally written and performed by Turkish ska/punk band Athena, the brainchild of twin brothers and Fenerbahçe Ülker supporters Gökhan Özoğuz and Hakan Özoğuz. Formed in the early 1990s, by 1998 Athena appreciated a national audience in Turkey and their song “Holigan” became an anthem of sorts for certain soccer fans in the country.
Sep
0
Official BallinEurope Fearless Predictions™ … in haiku!
Basho would like Turkey's chances
Fearless Predictions™? You bet BallinEurope’s got ‘em for today’s matches! Just to present the prognostications a bit differently and not at all because BiE seeks to become the TMQ of basketball or anything, outcomes are predicted in haiku format!
Slovenia vs. Australia
For Slovenia-Oz,
A big men’s match: These Euros
Have slightly more skills.
Slovenia 78, Australia 69
Turkey vs. France
Turkey’s heated up
Too much size for reeling France
Dommage, Les Blues pauvres…
Turkey 69, France 56
Sep
20
Brutal week for Greek basketball capped with 80-72 loss to Spain
Ευχαριστώ για τις αναμνήσεις, Δημήτρη!
Hell of a week for Hellas basketball on both international and national league fronts…
Team Greece was bounced from the 2010 FIBA World Championship by Spain last night in an improved showing from the Russia game, which had Ioannis Bourousis and Vassilis Spanoulis calling out for a little respect from the fans in the aftermath.
And now, with the Spain game (and, for Greece, the 2010 championship) history, bad news is following rapidly. Dimitris Diamantidis announced directly after the loss that he’d be retiring from the national team, effective immediately: “The game with Spain was my last,” Diamantidis declared.
The future of coach Jonas Kazlauskas with the team is also in doubt, as his contract has expired and no overtures have been made to the Lithuanian. In analyzing the tournament, Kazlauskas stated that he “saw a lot of mistakes, [and] some things we did wrong.” He went on to cite the punishments of Antonis Fotsis and Sofoklis Schortsanitis, plus the wrist injury Bourousis played through as further detriments to the team’s success in the 2010 Worlds.
Sep
4
BallinEurope’s shortest-ever Fearless Predictions
Just wanted to get this one in there…
Serbia and Spain.
Sep
13
Official BallinEurope Power Rankings: Pre-knockouts edition
The Prize
Now that noted astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has announced God’s non-existence in our universe through mathematics, maybe he can start working on explaining the FIBA tie-breaking procedure.
No, no, don’t start on BiE; it’s as easy as dialing up Wikipedia to find the steps in determining seeding for tournament play: Placement is determined based on, in order, game results between tied teams; scoring average between games of the tied teams; scoring average for all games of tied teams; drawing of lots.
Nice and neat it may be, but empirically this definition falls short. Seriously somebody should explain to BiE how/why France ends up in the fourth seed in Group D (and with the unfortunate fate of drawing home Turkey in round one) when they clearly whupped Spain’s butts early? How/why does Team China, a team that’s seemingly won one game in all of 2010, advance over Puerto Rico who not only beat China in the preliminaries but also outscored and surrendered fewer points than either of the other two squads involved in the tiebreaker?
Ah, whatever. Here’s the way BallinEurope might have seeded the tournament, based firstly on record and thereafter on momentum – after five games, at least we’ve got that objective criteria.
1. USA, 5-0. Is there any doubt that Kevin Durant will, at some point in his career, be called The Best Player in the World? That outrageous amounts of big guys aren’t necessarily life-or-death in an international tournament? That Kevin Love, thanks to his hard work and exposure, will be the most popular Minnesota Timberwolf next season? That we should finally stop calling these guys “The B-deem Team”? Answers: No, maybe a little yet, absolutely not, and yes please.
