Ball in Europe – European Basketball Blog

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”.

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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.

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

As the Final Four approaches, so does the deadline for the NIKEiD contest. In case you haven’t seen the contest, here is a short explanation again:

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Identify yourself, your style, your game, with NIKEiD. An amazing program that allows you to choose!

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The basketball brand K1X might be known to most of the European basketball fans, players and sneakerheads, while the 1993 founded company out of Munich just begins to conquer the American market. They also started a k1x blog, that talks about their players like Corey “homicide Williams, who just signed with Cibona Zagreb. Just in case you are looking for the category “girls and basketball” the k1x blog might be the place to be.K1X is also within the Euroleague. You might have seen Ademola Okulaja, Fabio die Bella, Jonas Maciulis and of course NBA player Ron Artest wearing k1x basketball shoes.

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