BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

Meanwhile, over in Hollywoodland … to no cineaste’s surprise, the silent film The Artist was named “Best Motion Picture of the Year” at the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony. While Tinseltown may have had a decent, if not mind-blowing, twelve months of production in 2011 – as evidenced by Woody Allen taking the “Best Original Screenplay” award for Midnight in Paris with his perhaps 24th- or 25th-best ever script – the year in basketball movies was disappointing to say the least.

In hindsight, no real possibility existed for the 2011 crop of hoops flicks to match the previous year’s output in terms of either quantity or quality, what with ESPN in the midst of its “30 for 30” documentary series. Eight basketball documentaries (nine if you include June 17, 1994) mostly well worth watching – spearheaded by the most excellent Once Brothers – were released in ’10 alongside the barely-seen Saints of Mt. Christopher. Plus, BallinEurope got to crack jokes at Common’s expense while enjoying fave Queen Latifah thanks to the essentially NBA-sponsored Hollywood flick Just Wright – who remembers that one?

And, of course, the artistic achievement of the 2009 tour de force, Who Shot Mamba? by former Yahoo Sports blogger/general comic genius at large has yet to be matched by any human endeavor, so one can’t fault the international film community for not approaching this one.

But come on! By BiE’s count, there were four major basketball film productions crafted in the year 2011. A pair of European documentaries saw no release outside their native countries (more on these below), while the compelling-sounding “Long Shot: The Kevin Laue Story” is apparently still seeking a distributor. How is this possible? Just check out the official synopsis from producer/director Franklin Martin:

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How do you say “Linsanity” auf Deutsch?

BallinEurope supposes that the vocabulary term isn’t quite so necessary in Germany but, according to officials at one Bundesliga club, the phenomenon just might have been visible in Europe last season.

Back in 2010, few observers of the NBA Summer League had an eye on the NBA’s current imagination-catcher (and whoa, did the hype ‘round Ricky Rubio die down quickly, eh?) Jeremy Lin. The lion’s share of attention during that exhibition season was no. 1 draft pick John Wall – this despite Lin’s very nice 13-point, four-rebound, two-steal performance against Wall’s Washington Wizards side.

(As the top-liked comment on the below YouTube notes, “John Wall is a total hipster. He was getting owned by Jeremy Lin before it was cool…” Zing!)

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From the land of Dirk – Nowitzki and Bauermann, that is – David Hein reports on a few happenings in Germany’s top division of basketball. Read on to find out about Bayern Munich considering shrinks; an ever more cluttered playoff picture; the completion of the Top Four German Cup field; and Bremerhaven watching more and more teams pass them.

Hey Doc, We have a problem!
Despite times call for desperate measures, and the bosses at Bayern Munich are considering sending their players to a shrink to figure out how to win on the road. Bayern lost 68-49 to Fraport Skyliners on Saturday, dropping their ninth straight road game in the league (1-10 on the road in the BBL this season) and 13th overall away from home.

With his team owning a 11-1 record at home in the Audi Dome for a 12-11 overall mark, Bayern coach Dirk Bauermann sees the problem clearing in his players’ heads and admitted after the loss in Frankfurt that he has toyed with the thought of bringing in a psychologist for some time.

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Via the Shameless Plug Department, BiE advises readers looking to catch up on German basketball to check out BallinEurope contributor David Hein’s weekly English-language roundup of Bundesliga play – replete with highlights, natch.

Featured this week are blurbs on Brose Baskets Bamberg’s nice run, Bayern München’s abysmal road play and a sick shot from halfcourt by Tony Gaffney of Telekom Baskets Bonn to beat the 24-second clock. O, what the hell: That one BiE’ll run directly below…

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From the land of Dirk, David Hein reports on a few happenings in Germany’s top division of basketball. Read on to find out about the divergent paths of Brose Baskets Bamberg and Bayern München, Matt Howard’s new home, and the Fraport Skyliners’ surprise win last week.

Brose Baskets fend off pretenders Ratiopharm Ulm
So much for Ratiopharm Ulm wanting to challenge Brose Baskets for the German Beko BBL title. The two-time reigning league and cup champions Bamberg travelled to Ulm and made pretenders out of the supposed contenders, blowing out the season’s biggest surprise team 102-74 thanks to a team record 18 three-pointers.

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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.

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Before BallinEurope signs off for 2011, let’s give a late Christmas gift to the dunkaholics out there, shall we? Below runs a collection compiled through the year featuring dunks by Europeans, on Europeans or perhaps simply in Continental games.

The first 20 will listed by competition, followed the top five runners-up and the champion jam of the year. Who will be no. 1? Read (and watch) on to find out…

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“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.

Below, BallinEurope presents some links, highlight clips and like on some of the competing teams starring Igor Rakocevic, Tiago Splitter, D.J. Strawberry and that Williams guy, among others. O, if only BiE had time to properly cover all this basketball … sorry, the NB-what?

• Rod Higgins of the Basketball Post provides much food for thought going into Montepaschi Siena’s game against Unics Kazan on how Igor Rakocevic affects the Italian side’s game plan: Has Ferdinando Minucci sacrificed trademark defensive trickery at the cost of a faster game with another shooter?

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After lazily posting the BallinEurope Fearless Predictions™ for Wednesday’s Euroleague games solely on Twitter – and going four for four picking winners, naturally – BiE returns the prognostication to its proper place, namely here. Following, then, brief takes on each of tonight’s seven matches.

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With two Euroleague games in the books for each team and something of an overall picture developing, BallinEurope unleashes the November edition of its ever-“popular” power rankings for the two dozen squads. For reference, edification and jollies, the preseason edition of the ‘rankings may be seen here.

Once again, advisories in effect: These ratings are formulated from once source (namely yours truly) and are based on the way teams are trending at present, i.e. Bennet Cantu is not necessarily *better* per se than Fenerbahçe Ülker, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. While play in other leagues was considered, emphasis was put on performance in each team’s pair of EL games thus far, i.e. BiE knows Union Olimpija is 5-0 in the Adriatic League.

Without further ado, then, let’s get to the rankings! (Žalgiris fans, you may want to consider before clicking “Read More.”)

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