BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

February will see Turin playing host to the Coppa Italia, a grueling four-day tournament featuring Italy’s top eight teams. With the matchups now determined, BallinEurope’s man in Italy, Enrico Cellini, provides a brief preview of the competition.

The first half of Serie A season is over and the table is set for a little appetizer to the final playoffs. In Turin, from February 16th to 19th, the top eight teams of the 2011-12 season’s first half will play each other in elimination games to conquer the Coppa Italia, the second-most important national trophy and litmus paper of each team’s ambitions.

The teams and matchups are as follows.

Montepaschi Siena (1) vs Banco di Sardegna Sassari (8)
EA7 Milano (4) vs Canadian Solar Bologna (5)
Scavolini Siviglia Pesaro (2) vs Umana Venezia (7)
Bennet Cantù (3) vs Sidigas Avellino (6)

Will this be an opportunity for Montepaschi Siena to reassert its dominance after a few unexpected losses or a chance for rampant new challengers to prepare for an assault on the throne?

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Perhaps just 12 hours or so remain in European domestic league action for 2010-11, so it’s time for another rundown of the Continent’s champions.

Below runs BallinEurope’s updated roundup on the current situation in regular seasons and/or playoffs in the Continent’s domestic leagues. This list will be updated whenever possible.

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BallinEurope this morning congratulates newly-recrowned 2010-11 TBL champions Fenerbahçe Ülker, who topped Eurocup side Galatasaray Café Crown, 91-88, in game six of the championship series. This marks the fourth championship for Fenerbahçe in the last five years and a defense of their 2009-10 title.

Fenerbahçe’s big guns were all firing in the game, with five players in double-digit scoring including contributions of 20 and 19 from Omer Onan and Oguz Savas, respectively, down to Sean May’s highly efficient 10 points in 16 minutes.

Highlights and official Euroleague writeup follow the break.

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The 2010-11 champion has been named in Russia and for the ninth consecutive season, it is CSKA Moscow. Along with the exultation of the Red Army’s 74-63 victory over BC Khimki, however, came the sad (if inevitable) news that longtime Muscovite J.R. Holden would be retiring from professional basketball.

Playing nearly the entire game, Holden’s 25-point, four-steal swansong led his team to the series capper. Series MVP Viktor Khryapa contributed 12 points and four rebounds in the win.

But then, the announcement. Russia-based RIA Novosti today reports that after the game, Holden told his teammates that “This was probably my last basketball match. I’ve decided to end my career.” As for whether the naturalized citizen will play for Team Russia in FIBA Eurobasket 2011, Holden stated to the media that he’d promised coach David Blatt to participate and “I plan to keep my word, [but] so far I can’t say exactly if I’ll play in the European championship or not. I still have a week to think about it.”

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You know you’ve made it big in America when you get to read a “Top 10 List” on Late Night with David Letterman.

So it was for the 2010-11 NBA champion Dallas Mavericks last night, who were represented by eight players plus head coach Rick Carlisle and Mark Cuban in contributing the regular gag for the CBS program.

Unfortunately, the folks at YouTube diligently block any material from Letterman’s show but you can check out what the station is calling a “preview clip,” including appearances by the team’s “cocky and obnoxious” owner below the break.

For a prose listing of the top 10, including a killer line from Caron Butler and a glimmering of Dirk Nowitzki’s off-season dating plans, click here. (So when’s Jimmy Kimmel gonna invite ‘em over, anyway…?)

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BallinEurope congratulates another champion this morning, as FC Barcelona earned a Spanish triple crown last night by finishing off Bizkaia Bilbao Basket last night, 64-55, to sweep the ACB championship series. Barcelona ended its 2010-11 campaign, in which the Blaugrana took the Copa del Rey and regular-season title by regaining the trophy they last won in 2009.

In a tightly fought, highly defensive contest the league’s official site describes as “intense,” Bilbao threatened to pull off another upset in its Cinderella playoff run, first taking a 30-29 lead into halftime and adding an 11-2 run early in the third quarter to go up 41-33.

Series MVP Juan Carlos Navarro (who finished with a game-high 16 points) led the charge thereafter, however, and the title-holders outgunned Bilbao, 31-14, the rest of the way.

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Huge congratulations go out from BallinEurope.com to the Dallas Mavericks for the team’s 105-95 win over the superstar-studded Miami Heat in game six of the NBA Championship. Excepting those in the Miami metropolitan area, the basketball world is collectively rejoicing in playoff MVP Dirk Nowitzki and his Mavericks’ first-ever title, earned with the defeat of “The Three Amigos” and the Heat last night.

The Mavs become just the ninth NBA franchise to win the big league’s title since 1980, the year the team entered the league.

Truly, Dirk is the toast of Germany (not to mention Cleveland) today, earning another accolade for his Hall of Fame plaque in becoming the first citizen of his country to bag an NBA championship ring.

In Nowitzki’s hometown of Würzburg, a “few hundred” fans watched the match in the wee hours of the morning. Dirk’s father Jörg commented that the victory “is something very special for Dirk because he is finally recognized in America as a [great].”

The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger proclaimed the Mavs’ victory “The quiet triumph” (“Der leise Triumphator”) and recognized Nowitzki as “join[ing] the ranks of Germany’s biggest sports icons.”

Perhaps the big man might not need quite so much media attention, however: Die Bild noted in a headline that, overcome with emotion after the game, “Nowitzki cries in shower.”

For now, though, let’s just enjoy another look at the game highlights below and rest assured in the notion that sometimes, in sports at least, there is justice.

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While much of the basketball hype from the ‘States in currently focused on tonight’s scintillating NBA championship game six, BiE today runs a quick jaunt through Europe’s championship action, with video-embedded stops in France, Spain and Germany. Official BallinEurope Fearless Prediction™ at the very bottom.

First up, congratulations to new LNB champs SLUC Nancy, who earned a 2011-12 Euroleague bid in nipping Cholet Basket, 76-74, in France’s one-game winner-take-all championship final yesterday.

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It’s hard to believe the 2010-11 season is drawing to a close, but so it goes. Leagues in Turkey, Spain and the United States could be all shutting down for the summer (or, in the latter’s case, perhaps a good deal longer) within a week. A brief roundup this morning, then, of action in this trio of top professional basketball associations.

In Turkey, Galatasaray Café Crown defended homecourt against perpetual power Fenerbahçe Ülker, 97-93 in overtime last night, with an admirably balanced attack against the star-powered defending champs.

Eleven players scored in double figures in the game, but while Fenerbahçe’s headliners include studs like Darjus Lavrinovic (16 points, six rebounds, two blocks), Roko Ukic (18 points, four boards), Ömer Onan (18 points) and Sarunas Jasikevicius (12 points, three assists), Galatasaray got nice performances out of less-than-household names Ermal Kurtoğlu (20 points, three assists), Jerry Johnson (18 points, six assists), Joshua Shipp (14 points, 10 rebounds), Preston Shumpert (14 points), and Luksa Andric (10 points, four boards).

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Panathinaikos defeated rivals Olympiacos last night, 101-94 in overtime, to close out the pro basketball season in Greece and take its ninth straight EΣAKE title and 12th in 13 seasons. The win also marked the incredible 11th Greek league championship for coach Zeljko Obradovic, whose incredible CV also includes eight Euroleague titles, six Greek Cups, two Saporta Cups, one Serbian championship, one Serbian cup, and two FIBA gold medals. (Best European coach ever…?)

Before a full capacity crowd of 25,000, Panathinaikos pulled off the win despite an injury to Dimitris Diamantidis in the first minute of the game. After slogging through the first quarter, which produced an 18-17 lead for Olympiacos, the Greens were buoyed by the performances of Mike Batiste (who ended up with 22 points, 11 rebounds), Antonis Fotsis (22 points), and Nick Calathes (16 points, 11 assists, five rebounds) to grab a 41-39 halftime lead.

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