BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

In lieu of preparing for the 2010 FIBA World Championship with Team USA (sigh), Kobe Bryant has been visiting China this week as part of a promotional tour the locals are calling “Kobe 24 Live.” (Read: Kobe’s in Asia hocking basketball shoes.)

Putting in an appearance yesterday afternoon at 4.20pm in Changchun, Kobe signed a few autographs and dutifully commented on all things basketball for an adoring public – nothing unusual there.

However, what was unusual – and o so gratifying for fans of European basketball – was Bryant’s shout-out to The Continental method of developing players. From an English-language story running this morning from China’s national press agency Xinhua, Kobe was a bit fancifully quoted through a translator and back again, but the message on several topics was quite clear.

On what other countries need to learn from NBA and American basketball system, Kobe gave a surprising answer, and he said: “I believe that the system works best right now is not the US system, I believe it is the European system. Because they develop basketball players, and they teach them the skills. I think the European system has jumped over US system.”

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BallinEurope nears the end of The 35 Greatest Basketball YouTubes of All-Time with truly the cream of the crop from YouTube contributors. Today, we’ve got adrenaline-inducing excitement, record-breaking achievement, history-making tournament action, and the addiction of 2001.

And apologies in advance to a certain fan demographic for no. 3 on this list; y’all can console yourselves again with YouTube no. 8, if you’d like – or just skip to no. 2.

5. Cibona Zagreb vs. Partizan Belgrade, 2010 Adriatic League championship, with a finish probably even better than “0.4.” Those who saw this game or even saw this video fresh were blown away. ESPN’s Bill Simmons tweeted about it and Henry Abbott, El Hefe de ESPN TrueHoop Network, once called this clip goosebump-inducing: That’s endorsement enough for BiE.

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If there’s one online sneaker shop in Europe that knows about providing a quality product at a cheap price, it’s Kickz.com, partnering online shop of hiphop and basketball gear brand K1X. The best bargains were at the heart of the entrepreneurial spirit of K1X, a company which began from the humblest of all origins: Namely, selling basketball shoes from the backup of a pickup truck in Munich in 1993!

By 2002, K1X had added manufacture and design to their huge distribution network and created the “Chief Glider,” a sneaker worn by Ron Artest while playing with the Indiana Pacers. K1X has become a major player in Europe and in the world in the hiphop gear market, with the accent always on basketball shoes.

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Another Jordan Brand Classic Camp is in the books, wrapping in Istanbul, Turkey, yesterday. The camp saw 40 European players dueling on the court (and, in a serious sign of our times, apparently also in media relations) over eight days – including an all-day “presser” – in order to gain an invite to the prestigious Jordan Brand Classic game in New York.

A total of 10 invites were handed out to the under-17s at the camp, and Nike officials have announced that the European representatives in the Jordan Brand Classic game will be Tayfun Erulku (Efes Pilsen) and Talat Altunbey of Turkey; Serbians/FMP Belgrade players Vasilije Micic and Nikola Jankovic; Frenchmen/INSEP players Charly Maraux and Alexandre Chassang; Marius Grigonis (Sabonis Basketball School, Lithuania); Francesco Candussi (Isontina, Italy); Kyprianos Maragkos (Panathinaikos, Greece); and Malik Mueller (Urspringschule, Germany).

Six other international players will be selected to fill out rosters for the “International Game” as part of the third international ‘Classic.

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Though we only have a few hits from the cybersphere this weekend, most of them are quite substantial and well worth a bit of your time on Sunday. Happy reading, everyone!

Oh, Oscar!

Awesome, with a capital *AWESOME* is heinnews’ interview with Oscar Robertson, actually undertaken during the Eurobasket 2009 on the eve of the Big O’s induction into the FIBA Hall of Fame.

If Talk Basket and LRytas.lt are correct, FIBA (and notably Team Russia) are about to bring a whole new meaning to the team “wild cards.” Who has €750,000 to pay for potential glory in Turkey?

The big network, among others, makes it official: Stephon Marbury will sit out season. Of course, everyone should have known this would be the case when not even Olympiacos offered a token €1 million or two. Ah well, this’ll give the fallen Starbury a chance to, you know, really let it all hang out on UStream.TV.

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Our friends over at Kickz.com, the self-proclaimed “one and only sanctuary for ballers, sneaker freaks & hip-hop heads,” yesterday unveiled its site reboot. (Guess when you’re 16 years old, a bit of tweaking to the redesign happens every so often.)

Congratulations go out to the Kickz.com sneakermongers on the redo and congratulations, too, on a *nice* redo indeed. The new look is very nice and clean – this writer is extremely partial to the white background and left-hand menu. The headlining picture is done in slideshow format, though the timing is enough for even the less short-attention spanned to appreciate the info presented. Generally, the pingy, blippy, scrolly stuff is kept to a minimum – a serious megaplus in these days of ubiquituous tasteless sales-and-marketing sites in the cybersphere.

And all material is available in English and French as well as default language German.

And the catalog of shoes, magazines, clothes and other things in the aptly-titled “Stuff”/”Ceci et Cela” section is envy-inducing, indeed. A good call by Kickz, then, to have put the sale items toward the top of the homepage.

Sorry, what’s that, you say? Get to the sneaker porn? Sure thing! Enjoy Kickz.com’s new design as you check out some of these beauties…

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It's gotta be the shoes

No, really. Allen Iverson today touches down in Europe to play a little ball. Unfortunately, Iverson hasn’t finagled his way out of a just-signed contract with the Memphis Grizzlies and finally gotten with Olympiacos; A.I. arrives instead to promote his line of Reebok sneakers.

But he’ll be playing some basketball, too.

As the tour moves through Italy, Poland and Spain between today and September 25 – sorry for the lack of information here; Reebok has released frustratingly little information on this – a visit to Poland and Eurobasket has been confirmed. Back in August, Sport.pl reported that Iverson would take on sharpshooter Andrzej Pluta of Anwil Włocławek in a three-point shooting contest on September 19th, the day of the tournament’s semifinal games.

Local newspaper the Commercial Appeal adds that “The schedule calls for Iverson to work out with a professional team in Milan” (um, AJ Milano?) and that A.I. will be back in Memphis on September 25, as “The Grizzlies’ media day is Sept. 28, and training camp practices begin the next day in Birmingham, Alabama.”

Iverson himself is apparently getting pretty hooked to Twitter, yesterday promising on his page to “be working out” while in Europe and that “I am looking forward to working with the kids.” He also promises to “keep you all updated while I’m abroad so stay tuned. Visit my website for photo and video reports.”

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• 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.

Thanks to THE man at SLAMmagazine, Ben Osbourne, we have learned that Brandon Jennings will sign with Under Armour. Under Armour might be as well known to Europeans as European travel calls are to NBA players: not at all.

I’m not even sure if Under Armour is sold in Europe right now. (Oh wait: It is – even a German soccer club is wearing Under Armour jerseys.)

Looking at this picture, I can’t really tell what kind of untied sneakers Brandon is wearing; all I know is that the picture was taken in the Lottomatica practice arena while the sun was shining. So we will see if Brandon releases his own pair soon and if it will be available in Europe or if Under Armour is investing in Brandon’s NBA future.

What’s interesting and more important for us is that Brandon will start his own blog soon – in October 2008:

The blog will allow fans the opportunity to follow Brandon’s experiences in Rome and his pursuit of his athletic goals.

Let’s hope Brandon does not take the Euroleague players’ blogging as an example and write one post within the whole season. Welcome to the family, Brandon!

Do you feel it yet? The seasons are about to start – and of course the Euroleague! German basketball brand k1x Continue Reading…