So 2011 may have been few people’s favorite year personally, European basketball fans have certainly got to be taking solace in the fact that the past 12 months featured a seriously great run of Continental-flavored hoops.
To wit, in 2011, we enjoyed:
• an exciting round of Euroleague playoffs which included FC Barcelona’s surprising tournament-round exit and culminated in storied franchise Panathinaikos bagging its third EL trophy in five years;
• in domestic leagues, another weird Bundesliga playoff tournament, another controversial Greek tourney, and from Italy and Spain second-place shockers Bennet Cantù and Bizkaia Bilbao Basket advancing;
• lots of European superstars battling it out in the NBA playoffs, particularly on the Western Conference side, with Tony Parker, Pau Gasol, Marc Gasol, Joakim Noah, Luol Deng and of course Dirk Nowitzki proving so key to their teams’ successes (or lack thereof);
• the Eurobasket 2011 tournament hosted in the world’s basketball-maddest country which ultimately inspired Team Serbia coach Dusan Ivkovic to opine that “this has been the strongest European Championship in history…” (and, judging only from the star content alone, BiE would probably agree, despite a general loathing for such hyperbole directly after an event);
• some awesome schadenfreude-laced moments as NBA refugees came to play on the Continent during the player lockout, plus all the incredibly amusing speculation on names beginning with Kobe Bryant; and finally
• the close to the 2011-12 Euroleague regular season with a week 10 that featured some crazy dogfights for entry and positioning in the Top 16 round, including a great do-or-die game between Emporio Armani Milano and Partizan Belgrade.
Olympic Games or no, how can basketball year 2011 be topped? On the first day of the new year, BallinEurope takes a last brief look back at the most popular stories we ran in 2011. Relive one killer 365 days of European roundball once more below.
“No basketball anymore”? Are you serious? The next two days will see some 34 games played out in the top three European basketball competitions: Euroleague, EuroCup and FIBA Eurochallenge. 
BallinEurope was shocked (and is still simmering a bit) when EL officials announced their nomination of Armani Jeans Milano to the single available “wild card” spot on the league table. Why not a runner-up from a more dynamic association, like the Bundesliga’s Alba Berlin or, best of all, Galatasaray Café Crown? 
The 2010-11 professional basketball season may effectively be over this weekend, with a final championship series game scheduled in Germany tonight plus a possible elimination game in Italy happening on Sunday. But no worries: the end of club play means the beginning of summertime national-team tournaments, starting with the 2011 FIBA Eurobasket Women competition.
With NBA Championship game four in the books, German basketball fans can turn their attention back to the home country where game two of the Bundesliga final will be played tonight between Alba Berlin and 2010-11 Euroleague team Brose Baskets Bamberg. At stake in the series, aside from the actual title itself, is automatic qualification into next season’s edition of the big league.
Sorry, the N-B-what? While Euroball fans can certainly take pride in the outstanding number of Continental players still competing in the big league overseas – a list that includes Team Turkey’s Omer Asik, Team France’s Joakim Noah, Team Britain’s Luol Deng, Zydrunas Ilgauskas of Lithuania, Team Switzerland’s Thabo Sefolosha, French sophomore Rodrigue Beaubois (sort of; the 23-year-old has been mostly listed as “inactive” during the playoffs), old master Peja Stojakovic, and of course “Deadly Dirk” Nowitzki – multiple times the excitement is going on in Europe right now with tournaments happening all over.
