Aftermath cigarettes

• I have been traveling all day yesterday and got home at about 1am. For some reason I really got into the Fantasy League and thought about it the whole time on the trip. Well, my team so called “underperformed”.

• Igor Rakocevic - It looks like Christophe got ALL the glory for picking him, but it was ME who gave him this idea! I know that his ranking of 34 was great and it was the first time I had the top performer of the week on my team. Igor scored 27 points in a 106-65 blowout against ALBA Berlin. He shot 6/6 from the three point line - most of the guy can’t do that from the free throw line.

• Josh Childress messed up his first stats line: 3/6, 0/3, 2/5 FT! which gave him a ranking of 6 points only although he played 34 minutes. In the end Olympiacos lost their first game in the Euroleague competition.

• I wish Europe also had these cool tools the Americans used for their TV broadcast of the Election. We need something like Exit Polls. This would help us for sure to find out if American players such as Josh Childress are either loved, hated or just accepted by their club’s fans. It is hard to believe for Americans why Europeans won’t LOVE guys like Josh - but when you on a club where Papaloukas is the star on the team, people just accept guys like Josh I think.

• Brandon Jennings: First great game in Europe: 18 minutes + 14 points = ranking of 16. Nice job Brandon - also Lottomatica Roma won the game - in case that is also interesting for you.

• Henry Domercant made a little three point show in Montepaschi’s win over FC Barcelona. I saw Henry the first time play in person in Cologne a few years ago when he still was with Dynamo. Of course you think that Henry is American, but I am sure many people do not know that he holds a Bosnian passport. The 2002-03 NCAA Championship scoring leader is looking good in Siena and my faith in Siena grows from game to game.

• Euroleague Tv announcers: I did not follow any games last night, but I followed the games on Wednesday. Our man who did the Efes - Panionios game, did a good jobs, as I think he always does. He even made a funny comment as he pointed out that Miroslav Marinos-Raitsevits (what a name), is a horrible free throw shooter. Quote:” I know now that I said this I am sure I will make a total fool out of myself and he will make both.” Miroslav mad both. “Oh well - of course he makes both and I am the fool”. The Tau - Alba game was done by our friend from last week, who had no idea about anything, but looked better this week - he still has several versions how to say Ansu Sesay’s name though. Overall a better day for Euroleague announcers - unless I missed something last night - I am sure you will tell me in the comments.

• The Portland Trailblazers beat the Houston Rockets in overtime and both teams have Euroleague players in ther starting line up: Louis Scola for the Rockets and Nicolas Batum for the Trailblazers. The guy to watch although is Rudy Fernandez scoring 16 ppg off the bench! Maybe Nicolas will not be the starter that much, since he averages 2 points per game.

• JR Holden speaks about his injury.

• LeBron James got a new sneaker - which is not available in Europe yet.

• Talking about sneakers, Ronaldinho - a soccer, fubol, Fussball - whatever you want to call it - star has Hyperdunk editons. Crazy isn’t it? This guy doesn’t even play basketball! Her eis his FC Barcelona and his AC Milan edition. Call yourself lucky if you even get to see those sneakers in person.

After the Olympics: What’s the future of Serbia?

Well, there were no Olympic games for Serbia this time out, but with a 7-1 record in the qualification round for Eurobasket 2009, Dusan Ivkovic’s team has already shown their potential for upcoming years. Built around a core for the future with eight players born in 1985 or before (Novica Velickovic, Zoran Erceg, Uros Tripkovic, Kosta Perovic, Milenko Tepic, Milos Teodosic, Boban Marjanovic and Stefan Markovic), it looks like Serbia can be considered as a legit medal candidate for London 2012.

After all, if one of these guys does not progress as expected the whole team will not collapse: Several other very interesting players are on the bubble to join the senior national team after their dominance in the youth competitions where Serbian teams have seen the Gold Rush coming back to them. Particularly the highly successful 1987 generation around Milenko Tepic, Milos Teodosic, Dragan Labovic and Vladimir Stimac set new landmarks by winning the gold medal in every youth category: U16, U18 and U20. Additionally, all of these younger players don’t seem to have a super-promising near NBA future so that they can play the summer competitions without problems.

What is also interesting is to see that, for the moment, just one player in the roster is older than 30: Dusan Kecman. Though the shooting guard is very important for the team when it comes to spot-shooting and team effort, I have some doubts we will see him through 2012. The problem is that I don’t see anybody on the roster who possesses his quality shooting at the moment. Somebody like Mladen Jeremic could take over this role in the future eventually. The rest of the guard rotation is set for the coming years, with both Teodosic and Markovic already having important roles in their respective teams and Milos Vujanic trying to relaunch his club career.

The wing position is also nicely filled with the scoring talent of Novica Velickovic and the long-distance shooting of Luka Bogdanovic. Milenko Tepic can help out at small forward and Dusko Savanovic had some interesting minutes in the two games he played. Additionally, somebody like Tadija Dragicevic should be able to join the team as well as Marko Keselj. Both are playing for Crvena Zvezda next season and Svetislav Pesic is not considered the worst coach to make them better players.

At the inside positions, Nenad Krstic and Zoran Erceg are solid starters who still have a lot of upside. Kosta Perovic should see minutes on the floor again this season, and Boban Marjanovic is a great combination of size and power for the future. Additionally, you have the massive Miroslav Raduljica and Milan Macvan, who are trying to make the step from dominant force at the U20 level to contributor on the senior teams.

As you can see, Serbia is not lacking in firepower for their respective teams. I still have some doubts about a high-quality sniper from the three-point area, as their current top gunner Uros Tripkovic has already experienced lots of ups and downs. And you may have noticed that I did not speak at all about the Serbian “stars” playing currently in the NBA; it doesn’t look like they are in Dusan Ivkovic’s plans whatsoever. So the possible roster for London 2012 could be the following.

Guards: Teodosic, Tepic, Tripkovic, Vujanic.

Forwards: Velickovic, Keselj, Bogdanovic, Macvan, Erceg.

Centers: Krstic, Marjanovic, Perovic.

After the Olympics: What’s the future of Germany?

The oldest European team in Beijing showed during the tournament that it has come to the end of a cycle. Several German players will end their career in the national team after this tournament, and coach Dirk Bauermann has now four years to rebuild a team to remain competitive.

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After the Olympics: What’s the future of Spain?

The Spanish national team is the most successful European team of recent years. The silver medal at the Olympics only confirmed this trend. Besides the coaching question that reigns at the moment, I will today look at the future in terms of player material.

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After the Olympics: What’s the future of Croatia?

Today, I am going to talk about the youngest European participant in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Croatian national team featured nine players born in 1982 or younger, something that no other team could offer. Let’s check how the next tournaments could look like for Jasmin Repesa’s guys.

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After the Olympics: What’s the future of Lithuania?

After having talked about the future of the Greek National team, today we’re going to analyze the current situation in the Lithuanian national team.

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After the Olympics: What’s the future of Greece?

The Olympic Games 2008 are history but the next basketball events for the national teams are just around the corner: Eurobasket 2009, World Championships 2010 and of course London 2012. BallinEurope.com takes a look at the current situation of Europe’s Olympic participants and gives an outlook into their future. To start, we are analyzing the situation in Greece.

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Comparing European and NBA travel calls

For some reason, many Europeans - especially Spanish players - complained a lot about the referees not calling the U.S. traveling.

In some way, I really do understand both sides. Traveling in the NBA and the United States is not called the same way as it is called in the Euroleague and Europe. It looks like both sides just do not know better and do not understand why the other is so upset. To defend the US continent, NCAA and FIBA rules are almost the same, while the NBA just has a few minor changes.

During my trip to the U.S. this past summer (yes, summer is almost over!), I followed the US team’s pre-Olympic games as well as the Olympics. Before every game, the commentators talked about the differences between FIBA and NBA rules, such as the size of the court and even the size of the ball, but they never explained the important thing: TRAVELING.

Time to bring some light into the darkness of those made/missing travel calls! (Watch out where you click to start the video - the middle button is advertising. To start the video, click the left corner)

Here are the essentials of FIBA and NBA rules for traveling:

The NBA/WNBA rule is a little more liberal than the current NCAA and FIBA rules when a player is coming to a stop. The NBA/WNBA rule is identical to the pre-1994 FIBA rule; in essence, once you have come to a legal stop, you always have a foot to pivot with. NCAA and current FIBA rules can leave a player without a pivot foot. As well, if you land with a staggered stop (i.e. one foot, then the other, with one foot clearly in front of the other), the back foot is the pivot foot in NBA/WNBA. In NCAA/FIBA, the first foot to touch is the pivot.

Sounds easy right?

Here comes the problem: Why did the referees not make these calls in Beijing? It is obvious that at the Olympics, the teams have to play with FIBA rules, and that TEAM USA HAD to travel just because they are used to different rules. When you play basketball every day, you are not thinking about your steps - you just know them - so Team USA really had to travel, just because they do it - according to FIBA rules, of course - every single day in NBA games.

In case you don’t believe me - just watch this video where we have proof of travel:

We know now, that Team USA did travel at least 5-10 times a game, but the referees did not call it, but would that have changed the outcome of the Olympics? I don’t think so.

Still, why did the referees not make those calls? Any referee in a 5th division team in Europe would have made the calls that you saw in the video. I just hope there wasn’t any “higher” influence.

Monday’s cigarettes

The Olympics are over and the preseason is now officially launched. Here, the first Monday’s cigarettes of the season.

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Olympics: Spain vs Lithuania and USA vs Argentina LIVE

It is down to the final four nations and looks like the best of both worlds: Spain and Lithuania representing Europe - USA and Argentina representing America. Great, isn’t it?

BallinEurope will cover the Spain vs. Lithuania starting 2.pm central European time while the following blogs will live blog Team USA vs. Argentina:

(still to come - nobody has announced a live blog yet in the US)

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