(For those of you into new-fashioned YouTube journalism, see below the break for flashbacks to 2009 and Kobe Bryant expostulating on Rubio and the NBA’s foreign players.)

Public enemy no. 1 in Reds land

After game three of the Greek League championship, in which a number of questionable calls went against Olympiacos against rivals Panathinaikos, Reds management isn’t taking things lying down.

In a statement posted on the team’s official website, Olympiacos officials were “compel[led] to condemn those responsible for controlling the course of Greek basketball” for general egregiousness against the Reds. (“Τα πρωτοφανή διαιτητικά όργια σε βάρος της ομάδας μας των οποίων όλοι οι φίλαθλοι έγιναν μάρτυρες, μας αναγκάζουν να καταγγείλουμε τους υπευθύνους που ελέγχουν τον χώρο του ελληνικού μπάσκετ και που δεν είναι άλλοι από…”)

Describing the current standards of Greek refereeing as “sad and weak” while calling for assessments of referees Christodoulou and Anastopoulos, Olympiacos officials have decried consistent bias against the Reds and are now threatening to remove the team from 2010-11 EΣAKE contention if the situation is not changed to their liking.

(“Η ΚΑΕ ΟΛΥΜΠΙΑΚΟΣ έχει αδικηθεί κατάφωρα από την διαιτησία κατ’ επανάληψη και δεν προτίθεται να συμμετάσχει στο επόμενο πρωτάθλημα του ΕΣΑΚΕ της περιόδου 2010 – 2011, με ότι αυτό συνεπάγεται για την ομάδα μας και το ελληνικό μπάσκετ γενικότερα, αν δεν αλλάξει η σύνθεση και ο τρόπος λειτουργίας της ΚΕΔ.”)

Olympiacos has also requested that neutral officials (presumably appointed by FIBA) call game five (if necessary). No response from the league on the matter has been issued.

As for whether the officiating was indeed *that* bad, here’s the Mark Cuban-like tape put together by Olympiacos. Judge for yourselves below and enjoy game four tonight; here’s to thinking the zebras won’t…

Romanov: What's going on in there?

There’s nothing so bizarre – and often barely newsworthy – about the firing of a head coach, even one leading a successful team. Even one who is replacing a legend who was also fired in the same season.

But when a coach is fired in the middle of a national championship series, that’s already nearing on lunacy.

And when that coach was actually your third head coach *in the current season*, well, that there should be cause to start getting out the straitjacket.

And when that coach is fired from one of the greatest teams in the basketball-maddest country in Europe, well then you get a situation which has been described as “destroying Lithuania’s national pride.”

That’s what’s happening in Žalgiris Kaunas, literally right now, as the team’s head coach Darius Maskoliunas was fired just about five hours ago while his team is down 2-1 in a best-of-seven-game series to rival powerhouse Lietuvos Rytas.

The timeline of key events leading up to Maskoliunas’ firing goes something like this.

• May 2009. One Russian/Lithuanian businessman named Vladimir Nikolayevich Romanov takes over majority ownership of Žalgiris, which is experiencing serious financial difficulties. He is portrayed in the media as a savior of the club, an existence without which Romanov can reportedly “not imagine.” And if that name sounds familiar to soccer fans, well, there’s a reason for that. Much more on this guy soon.

• December 2009. Gintaras Krapikas is fired and/or resigns as head coach, citing the classic irreconcilable differences, and is replaced by former Team Lithuania coach Ramunas Butautas.

• February 2010. Butautas is fired as head coach, despite Žalgiris’ top spot on the Lithuanian League (LKL) table and having led his team to two key wins in Euroleague play and thus advancing the green-and-white to the Top 16. He is replaced by assistant coach Darius Maskoliunas, who was said to have been in the running for the “top” job “way back” when Krapikas was fired.

• Monday. Rumors and whispers begin leading up to game three of the LKL finals. Local media begins reporting a sudden “crisis” in Žalgiris. Some say Maskoliunas may be fired at the end of the season; some say Romanov is ready to pull the trigger once again. Former Eisbären Bremerhaven coach Sarunas Sakalauskas’ name is mentioned. Maskoliunas offers no comment.

• Monday night. Lietuvos Rytas edges Žalgiris, 83-81, after leading by 20 at halftime, to take a 2-1 lead in the series.

• In the post-game, Marcus Brown, Dainius Salenga, and Martynas Pocius refuse to speak to media members. Mantas Kalnietis offers no comment on the still vague “crisis” enveloping the team behind the scenes, but does talk about the game.

• Tuesday, approximately 4pm. Maskoliunas isn’t allowed into his own team’s evening practice. Word leaks soon thereafter that Maskoliunas has indeed been fired.

• Tuesday, app. 5pm. Confirmation: Maskoliunas is out. Incredibly, the club states that Maskoliunas has been found not to be providing his best effort to Žalgiris and thus is in breach of contract.

Former assistant coach Gvidonas Markevicius is mentioned. When asked for a comment, Salenga says, “Today I’m not commenting on anything. Do you want me to get a LTL 50,000 [€14,500/$18,700] fine?”

Lithuania-based Basket News at this time also reports that the players have considered protesting by not playing the next game, but (clearly correctly) fear they wouldn’t be paid back due wages in such a scenario.

• Tuesday, app. 5.15pm. Gvidonas Markevičius has reportedly refused to take over as head coach and, as unbelievable as it sounds, player Marcus Brown is now considered a “front”-runner for the position for the remaining title-deciding games.

• Thursday, game four tips off.

Now this hiring-firing-hiring-firing could very well be simply more wacky machinations of supermegarich dude: Romanov has had experience in sport before. As the owner of Lithuanian football club FBK Kaunas, Romanov managed to get a team that had won eight Lithuanian titles in nine years – and as recently as August 2008 had defeated Rangers in Champions League play – relegated to Lithuania’s third division for political reasons.

In Scotland, Hearts owner Romanov became infamous for firing club manager George Burley (who’d been hired at the start of the season) after getting the team off to a ridiculous 8-0-2 start in October 2005, reportedly “just hours before their Premier League match with Dunfermline Athletic.”

(Incidentally, Romanov’s seeming insanity and the Burley firing are covered peripherally in Crime: A Novel, a recent work from the amazing Irvine Welsh, the third-greatest living English-language writer behind Salman Rushdie and Thomas Pynchon. Tangent complete.)

Some folks, however, see something nefarious in this particular firing. I mean, aside from the sheer surreality of firing *anyone* in the midst of a championship series, of course.

BallinEurope was turned on to the story (and the Twitter feeds) by a Lithuanian sportswriter whom we’ll call Y. The “Y” doesn’t stand for any particular Lithuanian name, but rather “Y” as in “Why? Why?!?!?!?!?”

Y. would go so far as to speculate that this “is the biggest proof so far that the outcome of the finals is decided. And if this can be proven, [there will be] no Euroleague for either Lithuanian team [and] years of suspensions.”

A certain suspicion has to be on the mind of every Lithuanian basketball fan (which is to say the great majority of the country), after all, and that is this. If Žalgiris loses the LKL championship, they lose the LKL championship. If Lietuvos Rytas loses the LKL championship, they lose the automatic Euroleague bid granted the Lithuanian champion – the bid Kaunas is already guaranteed.

So, when asked whether the coach of Zalgiris had made an agreement with Rytas without behind management’s back, Y. put forth a theory reckoning that owner of Romanov made some sort of deal with L. Rytas owner Gedvydas Vainauskas. Why would he do such a thing? Perhaps because Lietuvos Rytas is owned by the Lithuanian daily newspaper of the same name, essentially the largest (and thus most powerful) Lithuanian-language media outlet in the universe.

On his part, Y. admits that this all speculation and sounds pretty damn depressed. As well he should be. Such a crazed incident loaded with suspicion and certain-to-come accusations has got to be raising red flags all over certain international organizations. If the Euroleague front office whiffs any hint of impropriety going on to finagle a platinum-coated free pass into Euroleague contention out of the likes of LKL teams, one assumes the penalty/penalties will be harsh – oh yes, BiE’s talking suspensions. Imagine no Lithuanian team in Euroleague play for three years…

The reality is, however, that nobody knows what’s up with Žalgiris, and whether this frankly indescribable personnel shift belies anything more insidious remains to be seen.

There is, however, a game on Thursday.

How hard is it for one passionate Lithuanian writer/enthusiast? When BiE compared the situation to the reported worst excesses of Hungarian football in the 1970s, Y. skyped back with “I wish they brought communist times back in sports industry here
basketball-wise – there were no problems. You could be sure there were no such things, with exception of CSKA [which] would get some ref help. But it was everyone’s national pride and nobody had any money to lose, so players and coaches could resist.”

“Bring back the commies?”

Whoa, this could be bad.

BiE cannot name names in this situation, but many thanks to that hard-working guy (how hard working? He was giving me the following news at 2am local time) for the tip; he knows who he is.

The bombshell: A source close to the Cleveland Cavaliers who wished to remain anonymous has admitted that LeBron James should not playing with his injury in its current state. Apparently, the damage is enough that the right arm of King James – perhaps that should be “King Richard III” for the nonce – is having great difficulty in carrying anything heavier than a basketball.

The extent of the injury has been thus far been publicly diagnosed as “sprained elbow and bone bruise,” but with MRIs aplenty, a left-handed free throw attempt, and a 24-hour disappearing act in the very recent future, the tension builds over the MVP’s physical ability to play. Even after a “sudued” 41-minute, game-high 24-point performance.

Just remember when the lid’s blown off the X-rays on this one: You heard it here first. LeBron is playing hurt right now. Real hurt.

Have a nice day, everyone! (No, not you, Greater Cleveland Metropolitan Area…)

The implications and results of the Treaty of Lisbon are certain to be far-reaching, even reaching like Moses Malone into the world of European and international basketball. Ball in Europe takes a look at past, present and future in European Union sports regulation and legislation.

The Past: Bosman, of course, but also Lehtonen
The biggest moment perhaps in all of recent European sport history took place well away from stadiums and in courtrooms, resulting in 1995 in the “Bosman Rule.” And the Bosman Rule went well beyond affecting football across Europe and even pan-European sport; instead Bosman’s case helped redefine European Union provisions regarding free movement of laborers, a key perk for recent EU additions like Poland and Hungary with oodles of white- and blue-collar workers to “export.”

When the Bosman case was decided upon by the EU Court, transfer rules were changed for football clubs across Europe. As the very helpful website EUABC.com summarizes:

Jean-Marc Bosman was a professional football player for the club Liege RC. The club demanded a transfer fee of 11,743,000 BFR (€291,101) for him to change clubs. According to the Court, rules providing a transfer fee after the expiry of the contract are not compatible with the principle of free movement of workers.

In order to promote the development of young players of the home nation some football associations limited to five the number of foreign players each club team was allowed to field. The Court also ruled that limiting the number of professional players who are nationals of other member states is precluded by the Treaty.

(The entire text of the Bosman Rule is available here in 23 languages, but each in a distinct dialect known as “legalese”. You have been warned.)

Though the ruling applied specifically to football, most other professional leagues in various sports across Europe took the Bosman Rule under advisement in reshaping their own bylaws.

The Bosman case was later taken into consideration as a sort of precedent in a 2000 EU Court decision involving FIBA, the Finnish professional league, and the Belgian professional league the FRBSB. The grievance in question involved Team Finland standout Jyri Lehtonen, who played out the 1995-96 season (and his contract) in his home country before attempting to join the FRBSB club Castors Braine to conclude that team’s season.

The EU Court ruling in Jyri Lehtonen and Castors Canada Dry Namur-Braine ASBL v Fédération royale belge des sociétés de basket-ball ASBL (FRBSB) reads, in (small) part, as follows.

12. Mr Lehtonen is a basketball player of Finnish nationality. During the 1995/1996 season he played in a team which took part in the Finnish championship, and after that was over he was engaged by Castors Braine, a club affiliated to the FRBSB, to take part in the final stage of the 1995/1996 Belgian championship. To that end the parties on 3 April 1996 concluded a contract of employment for a remunerated sportsman, under which Mr Lehtonen was to receive BEF 50 000 net per month as fixed remuneration and an additional BEF 15 000 for each match won by the club. … On 5 April 1996 the FRBSB informed Castors Braine that if FIBA did not issue the licence the club might be penalised and that if it fielded Mr Lehtonen it would do so at its own risk.

13. Despite that warning, Castors Braine fielded Mr Lehtonen in the match of 6 April 1996 against Belgacom Quaregnon. The match was won by Castors Braine. On 11 April 1996, following a complaint by Belgacom Quaregnon, the competition department of the FRBSB penalised Castors Braine by awarding to the other club by 20-0 the match in which Mr Lehtonen had taken part in breach of the FIBA rules on transfers of players within the European zone. In the following match, against Pepinster, Castors Braine included Mr Lehtonen on the team sheet but in the end did not field him. The club was again penalised by the award of the match to the other club. As it ran the risk of being penalised again each time it included Mr Lehtonen on the team sheet, or even of being relegated to the lower division in the event of a third default, Castors Braine dispensed with the services of Mr Lehtonen for the playoff matches.

14. On 16 April 1996 Mr Lehtonen and Castors Braine brought proceedings against the FRBSB in the Tribunal de Première Instance, Brussels, sitting to hear applications for interim relief. They sought essentially for the FRBSB to be ordered to lift the penalty imposed on Castors Braine for the match of 6 April 1996 against Belgacom Quaregnon, and to be prohibited from imposing any penalty whatever on the club preventing it from fielding Mr Lehtonen in the 1995/1996 Belgian championship, on pain of a monetary penalty of BEF 100 000 per day of delay in complying with the order.

18. In those circumstances the Tribunal de Première Instance, Brussels … referred the following question to the Court for a preliminary ruling:
Are the rules of a sports federation which prohibit a club from playing a player in the competition for the first time if he has been engaged after a specified date contrary to the Treaty of Rome (in particular Articles 6, 48, 85 and 86) in the case of a professional player who is a national of a Member State of the European Union, notwithstanding the sporting reasons put forward by the federations to justify those rules, namely the need to prevent distortion of the competitions?
Though it seemed to be going against the crucial “freedom of worker movement” regulations, the EU Court ultimately sided on the state of sobriety in ruling that while “rules preventing Belgian clubs from fielding basketball players from other Member States where they have been transferred after a specified date constitute an obstacle to the freedom of movement for workers,” the reality was that “this obstacle may be justified on non-economic grounds which only concern sport as such. The setting of transfer deadlines may be intended to avoid distortion of the regularity of competitions.”

Lehtonen: Stirred the pot in his day

In other words, no guns-for-hire strictly for the purposes of, um, supplementing the roster before the playoffs would be allowed in EU states’ professional basketball leagues.

The Present: Sports organizers hopeful
Though some contend that recent statements from FIFA and the International Olympic Committee in praise of the Treaty of Lisbon reflect merely a greedy desire to return to “a simpler time when individual sports could run their own affairs the way they wanted without having to answer to the demands of labour laws or even, in some cases, basic human rights,” the bigger organizations rather imagine real opportunities for EU funds to support basketball and sport in general at its lowest levels.

Said IOC president Jacques Rogge in an official statement: “The impact of sport in the EU is huge, as is the influence of EU policies on sport. It really is time to move from a case-by-case approach to an environment where the specific characteristics of sport can be taken into account properly.”

Provisions for sport in the treaty include potential assistance for sporting clubs struggling financially, creation of “solidarity mechanisms” to compensate for some training costs, regulations on cross-border media rights, and an overall governing body (more on this below).

Certain proposals that were rejected back in 2008 and were not modified in the treaty’s present form included a ban on transfers of players younger than 18 years old (Can anyone else imagine an alternate-universe “Rubio Case”?), salary caps, and budget caps calling for clubs to depend fiscally only on “natural resources,” i.e. income derived from ticket, paraphernalia, and media sales.

Ultimately, this writer guesses that the newly-created Council of Sports Ministers will end up going down as the most important change to shape sport with the Treaty of Lisbon’s passage. Naturally, a few nations and professional sports organizations – notably Great Britain and Premiership football – opposed the creation of a “sports super regulator” and something of a compromise was reached giving a committee a supportive/promotional role. On this, European Olympic Committee president Patrick Hickey stated “We fully support this approach since the European Union should support and not regulate sport.”

The first-ever EU Council of Sport Ministers will be held in early 2010.

The Future: Too good to be true?
Can the Treaty of Lisbon really prove a boon to European basketball or will, as many hoops devotees on The Continent surely fear, any and all benefit to be gleaned from EU support simply be sucked up by the ubiquitous football? Though the Bosman Rule is surely here to stay (hey, free agency is the dominant mode of sports capitalism), Euroskeptics see the relevant articles as a hindrance to individual nations’ rights.

Van Rompuy: Obama for EU sport?

Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy, now seen to be the vogue choice for the upcoming position of EU President, is unabashedly pro-Europe and even mentioned sport in drafting his party’s stance toward the Lisbon Treaty. “Apart from the euro, other national symbols need to be replaced by European symbols,” the manifesto states, including in a list of suggestions “one-time EU sports events.”

(Just imagine another off-season tournament featuring top EU clubs – too much is never enough!)

The joint statement from FIFA/IOC clearly supports the committee and the treaty:

“…The reference to sport in the Lisbon Treaty enables the set-up of a specific EU sports funding programme as well as a better mainstreaming of sport in existing programmes.

“In the coming months, the focus of the Olympic and Sports Movement, which took a clear and unified position on the autonomy and specificity of sport last year, will now be on the proper implementation of articles 6 and 165 [clauses dealing with culture and specifically sport].

“It is about protecting sport’s autonomy on the one side, and safeguarding the integrity of sporting competitions on the other side.”
We can only hope that the rosy vision of the FIFA/IOC comes to pass, because there are a lot of basketball programs that could use a little support, streamlining and/or straight-up bailouts right about now. Remember, Unionists, it’s good for culture!

The agent business in Europe is a tough business.

Getting teams to sign your player, to negotiate a deal that implements on-time payment and diverse extras such as cars, apartments and bonuses and to handle problems of players (i.e. when your player ends up in a fight in a club…) is not what you call an easy job.

It might get even tougher for these guys in the shadows during the global recession.

I recently asked several European agencies for their opinion on the financial crisis and its effects on their daily business.

The answers came in plenty and gave me a good insight on the situation of most agencies here on the old continent.

Gasper Bizjak and Goran Gramatikov of Global Sports Plaza quickly responded:

Our agency is growing year by year and world recession didn’t affect on securing our clients (players and coaches both male and female) with quality jobs much, but it sure did on player salaries and consequently also on agent fees.

The biggest problem has become tardiness in paying players and agents.

The same was recognized by another big agency:

Many teams had problems paying player salaries after January, and due to that, agent fees were on the very bottom of the priority list. Many teams who did not qualify for the playoffs tried to save a month’s salary by selling their players, but there were no buyers, only sellers.

To make a long story short: Many European teams were not able to fulfill their obligations toward their players and toward the agents.

So most agents suffered even more from the financial crisis then the players they represent, as agent fees were cut before teams decided to cut off payments to players as well.

Other agents decided to place its players in South America, where the situation appears more stable. Says Stefano Lips of Kingstone Basketball:

Lately, we have developed a stronger presence in South America where we have found good financial availability and timely payments.

What’s more interesting is that the outlook for the upcoming season in the European leagues is coupled with reduction of players’ salaries due to the immense cuts of most budgets.

Global Sports Plaza shares their view of the near future:

Recession didn’t and won’t hurt top-level players much, as they are holding their price but will surely effect medium-level players by 20% or even 50% salary cuts from previous seasons.

Lots of players will now stay in their domestic leagues, as the money offered abroad compared to the money at home will be the same or even in favor of the home-based offers. Before the 2008/09 season, we were witnesses to several transfers of NBA players to Europe (we are talking about players that played important roles within their teams) and most likely the majority of them is going to return to the NBA for the 2009/10 season. Even though they get great money here, they are just not keen on late payment.

The 2009-2010 season will be an interesting season for all of us (players, clubs and agents), as always in tough situations, only the ones survive who are able to adjust to a new situation quicker.

Another big agency writes:

For next season, we expect 10% of all European teams to vanish (they will go bankrupt and withdraw from the league). Of the remaining clubs, 90% will lower their annual budgets by 20-80%. For players, it is normal to expect a raise every year.

The combination of this expectation and the lower team budgets will lead to a very long and hot summer in which a record number of players may fire their agents (for not getting them a raise) and finding themselves unemployed when the season starts.

And finally Stefano Lips of Kingstone Basketball, who sounds more confident about the future:

I don’t see the number of transactions being reduced, maybe just modified, as some leagues are allowing more imports to play and want their national players to obtain more playing time and consideration. For Bosmans, outside of their home league, this may reduce their market possibilities. As far as contracts are concerned, it is widely known that clubs will be reducing budgets by at least 15-20%, if not more. Still, some teams want to stay competitive and will be finding a way to increase their budgets. Personally, I don’t believe we will see a big drop off.

The conclusion for me and probably a lot of you is that player salaries are supposed to drop and some clubs will be disappearing.

Not a rosy picture is being drawn by these agents. Also, expect some high-profile players to sign for significantly less to a big team at the last minute after waiting all summer for a big-time offer to appear. The value of a homegrown player is going to rise and their salaries might also do so while U.S. players are facing a drop in salary due to changes on the market which may include less use of imported players in Europe.

Also, do not expect to see another mediocre NBA player receiving larger paychecks in Europe than in the NBA, as players such as Nenad Krstic and Bostijan Nachbar, among others, faced delays in payment of their salaries, which has happened all across Europe no matter if it was Spain, Italy, Greece or Russia. This tendency is surely going to scare off current NBA players and might lead some of Europe’s finest over the ocean…

Only time will tell how teams, players and agents will handle these financial circumstances, but the coming year(s) might be crucial for European basketball and its chosen direction towards more professionalism in the sport.

written by Kristian Santiago

Besides the speaker, most fans had nothing more to offer than a little hand clapping for a between-the-legs dunk executed by a nearly seven-foot tall player. Everybody who him- or herself plays basketball knows how hard it is to dunk the ball, especially if you have to put it between your legs. But these days, basketball fans worldwide are so used to such scenes that you even heard voices in the arena saying: “Nice, but that dunk is, like, 10 years old.”

I mean, ten or so years ago, there was no YouTube to see all manner of high-flying action. As a basketball junkie and slam dunk fan, you had to wait the whole year for NBA All-Star weekend and stay awake all night to see some spectacular slams. The dunk contest for European All-Star games were not highly covered by media, and the level was far from the NBA event. If you go even further back, a dunk in Europe was a very innovative concept to score a basket back then, and there were only a few European players like Richard Dacoury executing a dunk in the game.

After the Olympic Games 1992 in Barcelona, the dunk also became more popular in Europe, and young Europeans improved their athletic build in order to become above-the-rim players, too. And it was particularly in France where a real “Dunk Culture” developed and produced one of the most spectacular leagues outside the United States. Players like Alain Digbeu and Mous Sonko filled the highlight reels of the French basketball fans and unfortunately, there are not that many of these spectacular plays still to be found.

This Dunk Culture produced a lot of “pure” dunking artists in France and the creation of the Slam Nation team exported the French touch in Dunks worldwide. On the other side of the ocean, high-flying stars like Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady improved the level of the NBA Slam Dunk Contest to unseen heights since the legendary MJ-Dominique Wilkins battles. The popularity of the NBA in Europe increased the notability of the dunkers and the dunk was considered THE element of modern basketball.

When YouTube started to become popular at the beginning of this century, the worldwide takeover of the dunk was starting. Everybody could put his favorite dunks on the net and made the slam dunk incredibly popular among viewers. But herein enters the factor that changed everything: With the huge amount of dunks available for free viewing, the magic of the jam started to crumble. Kadour Ziani and his Slam Nation acrobats published million-view clips and everybody started to think that these dunks are “normal,” as there are so many available on the net.

This availability of dunking on the net was, of course, also a boost to creativity during various contests, as the participants could check what was going on around the world in terms of dunks. You could see Europeans imitating the Isiah Rider between the legs dunk or Americans going for the Abdoul Bamba dunk. But more evident was the fact that more and more people got “used” to this type of spectacular move with the results described above: barely any reaction to highly spectacular dunks in a contest. Even a women dunking the ball in a game now seems quite common to YouTube users.

So what do we want? Personally, I’m not a big fan of dunking contest, I prefer the tough baskets in game situations. Let us show some respect to the artists of the slam, however, and give them the deserved credit during these events. But what’s better than a spectacular in-your-face dunk on the fast break? This can never beat any kind of acrobatics produced during a contest. (Found via BasketSession.com.)

Oskari Pastila’s documentary film, “Basket Case,” follows how new management decided to renovate the entire Porvoon Tarmo Korisleague team during the summer and fall of 2006. As a result, Tarmo used a grand total of twelve non-domestic players during league play, with seven of them staying in the roster until the final playoff game. Like a classic Greek tragedy, things start to go horribly wrong at some point.

“Basket Case” gives an in-depth view of a basketball club trying to fulfill high expectations with low budget. The events of the Korisliiga’s 2006/2007 season have led to the situation in which Finnish basketball finds itself now, with teams dropping out of league play and renegotiating player contracts because of financial difficulties.

Even though it’s hard to catch this documentary as a non-Finnish basketball fan, it’s definitely worth a look. “Basket Case” premieres in Helsinki on January 22nd, 2009. You can watch the trailer on Facebook.

Let’s hope that this movie will be available on DVD sooner or later.

Rawle got into a fight in a domestic league game against Split.

These fights of Americans have happened very often in recent weeks. I had to check immediately if Rawle is also from Arizona, as are his fight buddies Loren Woods and Joseph Blair, but thank god he is not: Rawle went to Oakland University, although he had a one-year contract with the Dallas Mavericks.

Here is the video evidence, thanks to Dario:

During a secret meeting between two American investors, Henry Feinberg (shareholder of Technology Crossover Ventures) and partner Steven M. Julius (president of Workplace Solutions), it was decided that they would want to invest in a basketball team in Hamburg, Germany.

Since they seek to invest a budget of €12 million, which is about 50% more than the current budget of the German champion and Euroleague participant, it seems that the partnership wants to invest into a top European team.

Hamburg right now doesn’t have a first division basketball team, but it does have an arena that would be perfect for top European basketball. Now guess who owns the Color Line Arena in Hamburg: Anschutz Entertainment Group, the same group that owns the O2 arenas in London and Berlin. With about 14,000 seats, the arena would be another top venue for the Euroleague and European basketball.

The Americans probably saw the huge success of O2 World in Berlin, where more than 10,000 people follow Alba Berlin each game.

As for the German league, Feinberg and Julius want to start their venture with the 2009/2010 season; I am sure the Euroleague will consider another wildcard spot for Germany and Europe if the team is really investing that much money. I’m also sure that Euroleague CEO Jordi Bertomeu liked the news on his desk this morning.

What’s our take?

Of course , we’re as surprised as anybody in European and American basketball, but this is more because of the opinions you get about German basketball. First of all, people tell us that German basketball is not that attractive and not top European quality. We’ve  also heard a lot that there is not enough interest in basketball within Germany – which is not true at all.

Checking our statistics, we get a huge part of traffic from Germany and our partner schoenen-dunk.de is on of the most visited Web sites in European basketball.

Another big reason is the attendance statistic from Berlin: With over 10,000 fans per game, Berlin is within the top ten of European basketball. Nobody expected this huge success.

Sometimes you have to form your own opinion to make sure you don’t follow a standard that other people set…