BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

Time may be running out all over European domestic leagues, but there’s well enough left for addition to the year’s best plays list – and this one certainly qualifies.

Check out Nemanja Nedovic destroying from behind a would-be dunk by Prienai’s Gediminas Orelikas in Lietuvos Rytas’ 75-67 LKL quarterfinal win last night. Note the strange physics involved as it is Nedovic who continues flying off the screen while Orelikas stays put in the key in dismay.

Nedovic added 20 points, four assists, four boards and two steals to this thunderous stat and must be considered an early nominee for Sportando European Team of the Week consideration…

Shout out to YouTube user M@nt@s for the post!

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Gunther: Can he or can’t he?

“Du willst Per Günther dunken sehen?” (or “Will you/we see Per Günther dunk?”) is a 68-second clip featuring Allan Ray and Pooh Jeter bringing the trash talk and the 185cm (6’1”) point guard’s strong willingness to jam.

Poor Per. And yet there’s a method to the seeming madness of this method. The club has announced that, should the Ratiopharm Ulm Facebook page receive 20,000 fans (could they mean “likes”?), Herr Günther promises to successfully dunk it through. Though perhaps he should recall what happened directly after ol’ Billy Hoyle pulled off the slam in a guaranteed victory…

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Yesterday, Sannti (a.k.a. Savas Birdal) basically won Twitter and the entire internet yesterday by posting the one Euroleague bracket guaranteed to be 100% correct – not to mention encapsulating in a single image at least one team’s entire 2012-13 season. Click here to experience the genius.

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Goran Dragic only appeared in 55 games with Shaquille O’Neal in the 2008-09 season, but it appears he learned a lesson pointed enough to be well summarized in 141-character Twitter length. And here it is:

“@espo: @goran_dragic What was the best lesson @shaq taught you?” Be your self and always pass him the ball:) lol

— Goran Dragic (@Goran_Dragic) April 3, 2013

Nicely put, Mr. Dragic…

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You’d think that the, um, enthusiasm at times of Greek basketball fans – you know, stuff like this. And this. And this. And … you get the idea – would be daunting for players otherwise pretty much unaccustomed to such behavior. And if the prospect of flares hurtling down like rain isn’t scary enough, you’d figure actually being knifed might turn a player off entirely to basketball in Greece.

Michael Bramos, however, ain’t going nowhere.

In February, Bramos was playing in his first Greek Cup final, another clash between the country’s Red and Green superpowers. That game, as is all too infrequently the case in Panathinaikos-Olympiacos, was marred by violence which delayed the game for an hour. In the midst of the chaos, Bramos was hit by a thrown jackknife.

So when interviewed by David Hein for the latest “Taking the Charge” podcast, what did Bramos have to say about the incident and Greek fandom in general? “If it happens, it happens … and that’s just the way Greece is.” (For more insight from Bramos, click on the previous link to hear the full interview.)

Prospective import players to Greece, this is your model: Just concentrate on the game and shrug off those knife attacks. It is what it is.

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In what is apparently an effort to either increase fandom or sheerly generate publicity for international basketball tournaments, FIBA officials started their week by announcing the introduction of an entirely new wrinkle to the game: Any shot taken from or behind the half-court mark will now be awarded five points. Reportedly, the rule change – which is effective immediately – was done with the intent to “ensure that such spectacular actions finally get the rating that they deserve,” according to a FIBA official speaking through Google Translate.

German Basketball Federation (DBB) president Ingo Weiss explained his “yea” vote for the five-pointer with, “You can draw from such a decision of FIBA your hat. You can imagine how chaotic the conference, with more than 200 participants and a translation expires in 36 languages and dialects, but in the end, almost all the participants have decided, we also naturally from DBB. We were also able to enforce the fact that the center line and not used, as another line is drawn. The new scheme is a further nuance our great sport – its impact cannot yet be assessed.”

Referees’ signal for successful five-pointer

According to FIBA statistics, successful half-court shots occur in approximately 0.12% of games; analysts for the German federation estimated, however, that some 5% of game outcomes could be affected by the new rule.

Further explain DBB officials: “This requires only that the center line will be painted in a red signal color. For the referee’s 5-point rating is not a problem: They show a shot attempt with outstretched hand (five fingers) to, at the other hand comes to success. This is also a reason that of the originally planned 6-point scoring again was abandoned…”

BallinEurope will now weep for the future of basketball. Directly after having Google Translate taken outside and shot, that is.

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France’s Pro B league doesn’t get much media attention in the US and after the latest segment of “Shaqtin’ A Fool,” they won’t be hankering for another clip to appear on NBA TV. Check out Shaq’s no. 5 choice for the televised wall of shame, as SPO Rouen Basket head coach Sciarra Laurent applies a unique trap defense against Maritime Boulogne, only to get a “T” for his efforts – and sadly, an “L” for his team.

Does the brilliant Awful Announcing have a German-language version? If so, they’ll definitely want to give some props to Sascha Bandermann of Germany’s Sport 1.

While awkwardly giving a report direct from the locker room of the Bundesliga’s Ratiopharm Ulm for the TV magazine “Basketball – Der Countdown,” Bandermann somehow had to maintain composure through a rather odd-looking bit of Philipp Schwethelm’s pre-game exercise and an attempt to spark conversation with banana-scarfing team captain Steve Esterkamp. And then known jokester Omar Samhan adds his two, um, cents to the proceedings. Yeah, this one’s probably NSFW…

Shout out to heinnews for the tip!

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BallinEurope will leave the questions about just how Dennis Rodman ended up taking his distinct breed of basketball diplomacy to Italy after a less-than-uncontroversial visit to North Korea with a few Harlem Globetrotters…

Instead, we’ll just let Taiwan-based Next Media Animation explain things; apparently, The Worm’s mission involves some NBA Jam-esque two-on-two in a match featuring himself and retired Pope Benedict XVI against a roster of priests, evil lawyers, a high-jumping altar boy and possibly a unicorn…

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All right! The folks over at Japan-based Dunk Shot have produced another odd manga-like take on an NBA team. While not long ago, BallinEurope showed the hoops-centric newspaper’s take on Kevin Love and the Eurowolves, this time it’s Chandler Parsons, Jeremy Lin and James Harden getting animated. Translation is forthcoming, but it seems as though the Rockets are preoccupied in similar fashion to the Timberwolves, i.e. it’s all about pursuing the ladies, and Harden (like Nikola Pekovic before him) appears to be having troubles. It’s gotta be the beard, eh?

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