Germany vs. China + Team USA vs. Spain - LIVE

Here we go - the day every single European and especially Spanish basketball fan has waited for. Well, is it really? There is no doubt, that Team USA wants to win every single game, including the final, to take it all, but how about Spain? Do they really have or want to win this game? 

Remember this is still group play, which only determines your next opponent in the Quarterfinals. 

Team USA has to win, no doubt. They will be motivated as anything, even though, only Kobe Bryant was watching the Spanish team play live so far - pretty strange for a team that tells us over and over, not taking gold will be unacceptable, claims itself the the redeem team and tells us they take every opponent very serious.

I am not expecting Spain to win this game, Ricky and Rudy will only show what they are capable of, while the rest of the Spanish national team is already known to US basketball fans (Gasol, Gasol, Calderon, Navarro, Garbajosa).

BallinEurope will blog the game LIVE, which starts Saturday at 10:15am US ET and 16:15 Central European time (10:15pm local time in Beijing). Should be a great game, but the important game will follow later in the knock out stage.

Even google loves Basketball

As a blogger, google is your favorite tool. You either use it to do research, read your daily RSS feeds or you have your check your gmail-emails. 

So did I last night and saw this great logo:

European review: Olympics day 1

 

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Thoughts on Team USA vs Turkey

9am here in the States, while Team USA is playing Turkey as a preparation for the Olympics. Here are some random thoughts during the first half:

• LeBron James is a fan of tight jerseys - I mean really tight.
• ESPN commentators sound like Euroleague commentators - if you have followed this blog and the Euroleague TV games, you know what that means in terms of spelling European cities and player names.
• first quarter, 31-30 - meaning no defense by either team, which Team USA will not see at the Olympics when playing teams such as Greece.
• As the ESPN2 moderators tell us, the FIBA ball CAN be smaller or bigger - never heard of something like that.
• Team USA has not learned its lesson - too much one-on-one, with Turkey taking advantage of that during the first quarter.
• According to the commentators, Carmelo Anthony is the best international player in the world.
• Way too many turnovers by Turkey to stay close in the second quarter - they only scored 7 points in the whole second quarter.
• The fans in Macao LOVE Kobe Bryant - even here he got MVP chants right from the beginning.
• Team USA’s full court defense does not work and is no more intimidating - not even to Turkey.
• For Team USA, it might all be about unselfishness, but somebody has to explain to them that playing unselfish and playing as a team is different - I still do not see a team - some great and nice highlight plays though.
• Turkey gave up with about 2:30 remaining in the third quarter.

Introducing: The BallinEurope Olympic look

If you are a fan of our BallinEurope.com guy, you might have noticed that he got “dressed” and ready for the Olympics overnight. 

We will come up with some specials about our Olympics design here on BallinEurope, but we wanted to make sure everybody checks him out (look top left - yeah, that guy!) and let us know what you think.

We also started a special feature at olympics.ballineurope.com at which we will LIVE blog games, maybe even broadcast games live this time. Should be fun.

Josh Childress considering Europe

Atlanta Hawks free agent Josh Childress is considering his debut in Europe with Euroleague team Olympiakos of Greece: So reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports today.

Josh is taking advantage of his free agency either to either get a better offer from another NBA club, while many think that he is actually considering joining Olympiakos who made him a nice offer to re-enter a more promising free agent market of the NBA in a few years.

Olympiakos is known for bringing in NBA players, as they did with Lynn Greer last season. Now, Josh is not exactly what we would call a NBA superstar, but he can make any team in the NBA better. Why? He actually shares the ball and works for his team.

Should the NBA and NBA fans be scared now that Europe is taking advantage of the weak dollar to lure away their NBA players? With European stars such as Juan Carlos Navarro, internationals like Carlos Delfino, high school standouts such as Brandon Jennings and solid NBA players like Josh Childress, many different players have considered and even joined teams in Europe and the Euroleague.

To me, this is a logic consequence of European basketball getting better. Just take a look at the teams that will participate in the Olympics: Host country China, Americas Champions and runner up USA and Argentina, Asia Champion Iran, African Champion Angola and Oceania Champion Australia. This makes the remainder — six teams out of 12 — European: Spain, as the 2006 FIBA World Champion; European Champion Russia; and European runnerup Lithuania; as well as the just-qualified Germany, Croatia and Greece. A total of six European teams made it to the Olympics.

Of course, for Team USA, anything but THE GOLD is unacceptable as every TEAM USA athlete, man or woman, keeps repeating on TV; this will be a very hard battle, though, especially with Americans joining European teams to make everybody around them better.

Side note: It is said that Olympiakos will go after New Jersey Nets free agent Bostijan Nachbar if the Childress deal doesn’t come through.