Ball in Europe – European Basketball Blog

Thanks go out this morning to the folks at ESPN Communications and congratulations go out to Vlade Divac and filmmaker Michael Tolajian, whose documentary film “Jednom braća” (“Once Brothers”) has been confirmed as part of ESPN’s high-profile “30 for 30” documentary film series. The addition of Tolajian’s film to the series had been reported by Serbia media earlier this week.

The “30 for 30” series features medium-length films on a sports subject; among the notable names contributing directorial skills to the series are Barry Levinson, Steve Nash, Ice Cube and Morgan Freeman.

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Drazen: Once Vlade's brother

An intriguing, albeit unsubstantiated, rumor hit the English-language bit of the internet today. Apparently, ESPN’s much-touted “30 for 30” series, in which independent directors create from start to finish a short documentary on a sports subject, will be taking on a film entitled “Jednom braća” (“Once Brothers”).

“Once Brothers” is a documentary film about the Team Yugoslavia squads of 1988-1991, dream teams that include a roster filled with names like Vlade Divac, Drazen Petrovic, Toni Kukoc, Dino Radja, Žarko Paspalj, Predrag Danilović, Stojan Vranković, Jure Zdovc, Zoran Čutura, Zdravko Radulović, Zoran Radović, Zoran Savić and Aleksandar Đorđević.

Focus of the story, like the best of the “30 for 30” series thus far, is a human element: When the former Yugoslavia fell into chaos thanks to a bloody civil war, the team’s cornerstones, namely Divac and Petrovic, “stopped talking [...]and the nationalistic rhetorics in both countries must have influenced them, just like many other friends and colleagues at the time, even family members.”

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To those living in international club basketball broadcast-unfriendly countries such as, ahem, Hungary, take heart: Eurosport 2 will be showing the entire slate of Eurocup Last 16 games, featuring back-to-back games on Tuesday evenings. So call it “Tuesday Night Basketball.”

As an added bonus, “The Euroleague Basketball Show” airs at 11a.m. CET twice a week, with news on Euroleague ball the focus on Thursday and Euroleague/Eurocup insights on Friday.

Sadly, the only matches set on Eurosport 2’s February schedule are those for February 2: It’ll be Unics Kazan vs. Valencia at 5pm CET and Bizkaia Bilbao Basket vs. Panellinios BC at 8.15pm CET.

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How will he look in red?

The VTB United League’s inaugural season draws to a close today and tomorrow with its Final Four round. The all-Russian semifinal game represents potential Euroleague semifinals preview – hey, it does say “potential” – and yet another chapter in the burgeoning CSKA Moscow-BC Khimki rivalry.

Over at the league’s official site, CSKA coach Eugeniy Pashutin acknowledged the increasing fierceness of the Russian Super League/VTB/Euroleague battles between the teams. Pashutin also promises to go with a big lineup against Khimki featuring new acquisition Pops Mensah-Bonsu and points out that his Red Army is “going to play four Euroleague-level matches in eight days and each of them is important in its [own] way.”

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J.R. from the United States sent us a nice trailer for the upcoming Euroleague Basketball documentary that will be broadcast in the United States later this year on ABC. The teaser is all about the Euroleague Final Four in Berlin, including lots of game action and interesting interviews. It looks like this will be a very interesting movie. Enjoy…

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The Basketball on (free) TV situation in Germany has been disastrous over the last years. For years, no German Bundesliga could be followed live, and even the NBA has disappeared totally from TV this season. Though you can watch BBL games through the pay-per-view/Internet TV channel Sportdigital.tv, for most of the German fans this meant 0n basketball on TV.

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David Hein will cover the Eurocup game between Brose Baskets Bamberg and Spirou Charleroi live from the JAKO Arena in Bamberg. Other games of the evening that you can follow as Live Stream via Eurosport are at 17h00 CET Khimki Moscow vs. Besiktas Istanbul (LIVE Stream here) and at 19h00 CET  Turk Telekom Ankara vs. Aris Salonica (LIVE Stream here).

Globalization – The player with the highest VAL on Zalgiris of Lithuania was US center Loren Woods. The players with the best VAL for Italian Montepaschi were Rimantas Kaukenas and Ksistof Lavrinovic from … Lithuania. In fact, the latter two combined for a VAL of 45 while all Lithuanian players on the Lithuanian team combined for a VAL of … 40. Neither Kaukenas nor Lavrinovic, by the way, ever played for Zalgiris.

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I have spent the last five hours cutting and laughing. Cutting Euroleague TV announcer material, of course.

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Ilya Kalyagin, our source from Russia, lives in Rostov. On Tuesday, Spartak St. Petersburg played Lokomotiv Rostov in the Russia Cup quarterfinal. Just to let you know who players are on these teams:

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