Ball in Europe, the European Basketball Blog

They’re breaking out the superlatives today over at the ACB’s official website, full in the afterglow of a weekend’s worth of mostly tight games or, as writer Malo de Molina put it, “¡Qué jornada!”

When the dust settled, Real Madrid (20-5) had beaten fourth-place Valencia (16-9) and wrested second place from slipping Caja Laboral Baskonia (20-5), who suffered a shocking 74-58 loss to no. 6 Asefa Estudiantes (13-12).

Cajasol (ranked 5th, 15-10) and giant-killers Gran Canaria 2014 (8th, 12-13) continued their upward trend with wins over Valladolid (10th, 11-14) and Suzuki Manresa (11th, 11-14), respectively. Xacobeo Blu:sens (17th, 8-17) and DKV Joventut (9th, 12-13) managed to snap losing streaks, the latter scoring its first win under coach Pepu Hernandez.

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It’s not that BallinEurope is obsessed with both Bill Simmons and Rubio-to-Minnesota, but … all right, i am obsessed with both Bill Simmons and Rubio-to-Minnesota. Still, when BiE finally got around to reading this week’s patented “Mailbag” column only to see no. 1 best-selling author The Sports Guy take an incorrect swipe at the poster boy for European basketball’s future on the international stage, well, BiE had to come to the defense of Rubio, especially since the sparring partner in this debate will never actually see this column, heh heh.

The topic was, as stated, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ future. A frustrated fan sought empathy from Simmons in a pleading email that dissected a bit of the infamous 50% season-ticket discount the Wolves are pitching which BiE had a look at last week.

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Mentally battered and otherwise worked over since this morning’s 4am True Hoop live blogging, BallinEurope nevertheless wanted to post *something* with which the loyal readers might waste some time on Saturday.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, the token YouTube video highlight collection post of the day.

The Euroleague Top 10 Plays of the Week clip was again dutifully uploaded onto the ‘Tube and so runs below the break. Is Ricky in it? Yes, and Pops is, too, plus an awesome Viktor Khyrapa block that BiE *knew* would be in here as soon as it happened, awesome three-way passing work by Partizan, and Linas Kleiza creating one of the greatest highlights off a missed free throw ever.

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The big news from Spain – with probable ramifications for much of Europe; so is basketball in 2010 – was the Valladolid-FC Barcelona result. Barça came to town, donned the wacky day-glo uniforms and decisively took down Valladolid by a score of 73-59 behind Terrence Morris’ 20 points and eight rebounds. It was all the hosts could do, notes ACB reportage, to hold their own until ultimately succumbing to superior talent:

El Regal FC Barcelona se llevó el triunfo de su visita a la cancha del Blancos de Rueda Valladolid que, aunque plantó cara durante muchos minutos, acabó cediendo ante la calidad de su rival.

Ho hum, you say? Perhaps it is just another déjà vu result from the ACB, but with the win, Barcelona clinches a spot in the Spanish league tournament bracket with some 10 games to go in the 2009-10 regular season. The officially-created highlight clip from the game runs below the break.

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Drop whatever you’re doing – when you have about 25 minutes free, that is – and head on over to the ACB’s official website for a sweet little mini-documentary on all the pageantry and play from this year’s Copa del Rey, perhaps the most exciting cup tournament in European domestic league hoops.

The Copa del Rey “docu” is mostly narration-free with smatterings of English and Spanish plus tons of that international language, basketball. Lack of drama in the final game aside, this production certainly assists in the rise of ACB.com as one of the world’s premier basketball league-based websites. Enjoy!

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“Best of the (Basketball) Net” is one day late this week, but that extra 24 hours or so will surely make all the difference in terms of quality. For some most interesting recently-posted basketball-related stuff from the interweb, read on to check out excerpts from a classic of basketball literature, see highlights from a big ACB upset, discover Dirk Nowitzki’s secret weapon, and to witness the first-ever truly 21st-century dunks. Enjoy!

• Anybody who remembers the seminal book Heaven is a Playground will definitely want to check out this interview with Rick Telander conducted by the amazingly-named Bethlehem Shoals. For those of you not-in-the-know, be sure to check out the extended excerpts from the book which ran at Slam online in October 2008 and precipitated the book’s recent new edition out of University of Nebraska Press; and you can click here for the book’s official site.

Incidentally, the book was also morphed into a, um, not-so-great film starring D.B. Sweeney in the Telander role and featuring ballers Hakeem “The Dream” Olajuwon (no, really) and former NBAer/Hank Gathers teammate Bo Kimble.

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Familiar sight in the finals

Congratulations this morning go out to Regal FC Barcelona, as the Blaugrana reaffirmed its dominant status in 2009-10 with a crushing 80-61 victory over Real Madrid.

What’s that? You say you missed out on the pageantry and action of Europe’s most exciting cup? Not surprising, seeing as how little coverage events like Copa del Rey get; oddly enough, with more folks-in-the-know than ever lining up to proclaim the ACB the world’s second-best basketball league, international TV coverage of Spanish basketball is as lame as ever. (Come on, Eurosport, surely you could have ponied up a few euros for the Copa final game at least…)

Well, thank God and/or Al Gore for YouTube! Here’s BiE’s collection of YouTubes, so eagerly posted by ACB enthusiasts – a huge thank you to all of the clip contributors, too, by the way; hope you’re reading – nearly immediately following the action. To the highlights!

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Ball in Europe will be rounding up this weekend’s European cup action tomorrow, but for today here are a handful of stories from the interwebs this week about every other subject in a seven-day span spent mostly between deprogramming from NBA All-Star Weekend and preparing for the Copa del Rey.

• The best post of this week comes from the past: Specifically, a retelling of events surrounding a team called the Harlem Rens and the 1939 World Professional Basketball Tournament at Hoops Addict. What? You’ve never heard of either? Well, first you can whet your appetite here; then check out the trailer for the Kareem Abdul-Jabber written/produced documentary film, due for general international release in 2010. The book, on Harlem basketball and that area’s cultural Renaissance in the 30s, entitled On the Shoulders of Giants is out now.

• The NBA trade deadline went down this week and unsurprisingly the NBA’s second-most famous draft bust of all-time was dealt from the New York Knicks. All but admitting that the presence of Darko Milicic is as temporary as the 27 games left on the Minnesota Timberwolves’ schedule when he joined the team post-Nate Robinson trade, the team now seems mostly concerned about … making Milicic feel nice.

Says Timberwolves GM David Kahn, “I hope he will give it one more shot. Even if he ends up returning to Europe, I hope he wants to end his NBA career on a positive note. In our situation, he’ll play.”

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While not interested in passing definitive judgment, we think it would be useful and fair to take a look at the European basketball panorama. There will be no ratings or rankings here, just a snapshot of what the most important ballin’ countries offer us.

Ten years into the third millennium, it’s common to hear repeated concepts about European community and a sense of brotherhood, but the idea of “European basketball” elicits language only indicating something is wrong. Disunity: That’s the main word for the variety of ways to develop basketball in Europe. European basketball was well on its way until five to six years ago, when internal division began to decrease European ball’s opportunity to become a serious alternative to a NBA bereft of stories and talent to sell – yes, that was before Lebron James’ era.

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On Friday, FIBA and Euroleague officials conspired to grant Juan Dixon surely one of the worst weekends in his life by announced that he was suspended from play with Unicaja Malaga thanks to his misuse of a steroid product.

In the statement from the Unicaja front office itself, club officials explained that Dixon had “tested positive for Nandrolone in a doping control conducted on 5 November in Thessaloniki, Greece.”

Basketball fans may recall nandrolone as the substance Rashard Lewis was busted for in August of this year and given a ten-game suspension.

The FIBA suspension will reportedly remain in place until that body makes an official decision on Dixon; though one wonders how severe the penalty could be when a seeming hardliner on drug use like Commissioner Stern only dealt a ten-game suspension. It seems Dixon’s wife Robyn Dixon is taking a few matters into her own hands, PR-wise. On Sunday, Robyn told press that Juan would be staying in Spain: “He is kind of in limbo. He is still under contract with the team. Until the team said it is severing ties, he probably needs to stay over there.”

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