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Siena-Milano series highlights feature Bourousis, Fotsis, Moss, Sanikidze, Mensah-Bonsu and especially Daniel Hackett +++ Podcast: Interview with Team Spain U19s head coach Luis Guil; review of The Last Boy Scout; gobs of basketball talk +++ Highlights: Top five plays from VTB United League quarterfinals +++ Vassilis Spanoulis’ Euroleague interview, photo: What’s the message? +++ Podcast: Interview with Ricky Rubio; wrapping the 2012-13 Euroleague season, NIJT; reviewing The Wrestler +++ Instant history: Olympiacos dominates last 30 minutes, tops Real Madrid, 100-88, for back-to-back titles +++ Sarunas Jasikevicius: “Basketball is not a job — it’s a dream” +++ Euroleague championship game: Official BallinEurope Fearless Predictions™ +++ Flashback to 1995: Real Madrid 73, Olympiacos 61 +++ Question of the night: Is the Euroleague’s third-place game at all relevant? +++
Jan
39

Union in San Antonio: Spurs reportedly buy out Aron Baynes contract, sign to multi-year deal

Euroleague,latest news,NBA,Slovenia

This just in from TalkBasket.net: According to the international hoops-centric website, the San Antonio Spurs have signed Union Olimpija’s Aron Baynes to a multi-year deal and will complete a $400,000 buyout to land the player’s rights. Baynes had worked out for NBA teams including the Sacramento Kings in 2009, but didn’t stick in the big league.

After flirting with Erazem Lorbek in the offseason, Spurs brass were no doubt impressed by Baynes’ EL regular-season display (during which he looked much like Lorbek, 2011-12 edition) in which all he did was lead the league in two-point attempts, two-pointers made, offensive rebounds, total rebounds and performance index rating.

For San Antonio fans who subscribe to the “seeing is believing” credo, here’s a couple of goodies for you…

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Dec
19

BallinEurope’s Euroleague Regular Season All-Star Team

Euroleague,European basketball,latest news

As The Continent has bid adieu to eight teams’ Euroleague bids for 2012-13, BallinEurope looks back briefly to take a brief look back at the regular season’s best – not to mention spindly some quality time outside the mall and in front of the YouTube.

The BallinEurope 2012-13 Euroleague Regular Season All-Star Team looks as follows.

• Vassilis Spanoulis, Olympiacos. It’s almost getting difficult to find new ways to trumpet Olympiacos’ success and Spanoulis’ outstanding leadership in calendar year 2012. (They haven’t lost a game in two months? Whoa! Oops, sorry.) Sheer numbers fail to tell the entire story of the Reds’ leader’s first 10 EL games this season, but we love the stats here, so boggle away: How about 16.0 ppg on 46.6% overall shooting to go with 5.9 assists, 1.0 steals and *1.77 blocks* in 28½ minutes per game? BiE reckons Spanoulis was regular-season MVP, an idea backed by Euroleague Adventures’ Sam Meyerkopf in the latest episode of the heinnews/BallinEurope co-produced “Taking the Charge” podcast series. (Shameless self-promotion over.)

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Jul
4

NBA Draft refugees who could be heading to Europe

Euroleague,NBA,US basketball

Remember those experts who proclaim that “The 2009 Draft is one of the worst since 2001 and Kwame Brown,” and/or “There are no players worth mentioning.” No, we are not in the same situation of 2003 (the year of LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh), neither 2004 (with Dwight Howard, Ben Gordon, Devin Harris, Loul Deng, Andre Iguodala, Al Jefferson, Jameer Nelson), but we cannot say a Blake Griffin as first overall pick is far from Andrea Bargnani at number one.

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