BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

Cross yet another internationally-known name off the list for participation in the 2010 FIBA World Championship: Dirk Nowitzki today announced in a good news/bad news kind of way that he would not be playing for Team Germany in this summer’s tournament but that he will be suiting up for next year’s 2011 Eurobasket competition.

Nowitzki complimented the current crop of youngsters populating the German roster – guys like Lucca Staiger, Robin Benzing and prospective Oklahoma City Thunderer Tibor Pleiss and others from Germany’s Eurobasket 2009 team as well as this year’s U17 team – and said “I am sure that they will present themselves well at the World Championship and will continue to develop.”

Giving reasons for declining the opportunity to play, Nowitzki said – and stop BiE if you’d heard this one before – “I signed a new contract in Dallas, where there is a new team and entirely new conditions, and would like to focus 100% on the upcoming NBA season this summer.”

The official writeup at the German Basketball Federation website noted that Nowitzki’s absence would appear to make Chris Kaman’s inclusion on the squad very unlikely.

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So call BallinEurope kooky: While everyone else with an eye on basketball – even European basketball, for Arvydas Sabonis’ sake – is concentrating on the NBA free-agent market, BiE is all attention on the 2010 FIBA World Championship for Men tipping off in Turkey in August.

Naturally, bookmakers too are into it and the early odds for the FIBA World Championship are up, including props on outright winner, group winners and even game one matches available at BallinEurope.com sponsor SportingBet.

Unfortunately, the SportingBet “2010 FIBA World Championship for Men Outright Winner” prop bet is merely that; no “each way” betting allowing punters to bet on the second-place finisher: a key wager in this tourney, should you be one of the teeming majority reckoning Team USA is the prospective runaway champion of this thing. The odds table looks like the following.

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BallinEurope today presents round two of our 2010 NBA Draft mockup; there’s a pleasing European accent to the list, with the big Belarusian Artsiom Parakhouski figuring to go in this round (see to whom in this projection and quiver) and the tantalizing possibility of Kevin Seraphin potentially becoming the 12th French player in the NBA.

And then there’s Ryan Richards. Much to the chagrin of BiE’s man in the U.K., Sam Chadwick, Richards seems personally hellbent on proving wrong those who, ahem, assessed him as just another European designed to waste away on NBA benches.

In any event, we present the official BallinEurope 2010 NBA mock draft 2.0 round two below. Round one can be found here.

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Germany’s basketball fans got an unofficial boost yesterday, thanks to a column from ESPN’s Marc Stein which had Dirk Nowitzki declaring his career with Team Germany not yet over while speculating on a reunion with Chris Kaman in 2010.

The former twosome met in Saturday’s Los Angeles Clippers-Dallas Mavericks game, a matchup that was worthy of little attention outside the future implications for the German national team, particularly with the team seemingly in line for a “wild card” spot to be handed out for the 2010 FIBA World Championships.

Stein opines that Germany is in the mix for a FIBA wild card, along with Russia, Lithuania, and “Great Britain – home team for the 2012 Olympics and a fast-improving hoops nation led by Chicago’s Luol Deng” and that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has promised that “discussion about Nowitzki returning to the national team would be reopened as long as he took ‘a year off.’”

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From the heinnews website comes coverage and analysis of Team Germany’s 21-man squad, from which head coach Dick Bauermann will ultimately be shaping his roster for this year’s Eurobasket tournament … but wait a minute. No Chris Kaman? No Dirk Nowitski?!?!? What in the name of Uwe Blab is going on here?
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German national team coach Dirk Bauermann dished out plenty of praise for Panathinaikos guard Dimitris Diamantidis in an interview, in which he also addressed the likelihood of Dirk Nowitzki and Chris Kaman playing for Germany at the 2009 EuroBasket.

In the interview with heinnews.com, Bauermann was asked which team he would pick to win the Euroleague. And the nine-time German league champion coach answered:

Well, I think Dimitris Diamantidis has taken his game to another level on the offensive side. He was always an absolutely great defender. But now I think he is one of the best offensive players in the Euroleague as well. So, for that reason alone I would probably pick Panathinaikos. But none of those teams would surprise me

Bauermann also offered the latest on Dirk Nowitzki and Chris Kaman playing at 2009 EuroBasket, saying:

I talked to Chris two weeks ago and he said he was interested. He is back playing but he is not sure about things in the situation in Los Angeles. So that’s up for grabs. It will also depend a bit on what Dirk does.

and

I will be seeing (Dirk) in April in Dallas when they have a three-game home stand. I will go and try to convince him to play. I’m pretty optimistic that he will play. That’s too long a summer for him not to play. He would get bored I think if he didn’t play.

Bauermann admitted that Lucca Staiger, playing college basketball in the U.S. with Iowa State, could have a big impact on the German national team. And he also said that the Germans are thinking about finding a summer league in the U.S. to get Alba Berlin’s bench-riding German international Joe Herber some playing time before the Germans meet for training camp in Mallorca.

After last season, the German basketball federation forced Bauermann to choose between solely national team duties or coaching for a club. And less than a full year after deciding for the Germany it sounds like Bauermann is getting antsy about returning to the sidelines for a club team.
When asked if he could see himself coaching a club again, he answered:

Well, I don’t know if I can do it in Germany after causing such an uproar. But I accept my role as national team coach right now. I think I have a contract for four or five more years, something like 2011 or 2012. I don’t even know. But I don’t think I will be able to sit and watch these games being played for nine months. But I will definitely take a close look. This first year has been good. It’s given me a chance to reload my battery. But I don’t think I can do it for four more years. If something comes up that is a really intriguing offer, I will really look at it long and hard.

That sounds like a man just yearning to get back on the sidelines.

While Germany has done it already with an active NBA player (Chris Kaman), it’s now Italy’s turn to get a passport for NBA veteran Maurice Taylor. For me, it was already a surprise when AJ Milano signed the former Houston Rockets player this winter, but the opportunity to get an Italian passport was not yet known officially at that moment. Now, the club has confirmed that Taylor may receive Italian citizenship but for the moment, the main task is to get Mo in shape, as he stopped playing basketball over two years ago.

Taylor, who started his professional career with the Los Angeles Clippers after being drafted at the 14th spot, made a lot of impact during his years with the Houston Rockets; that team employed current AJ Milano sportive director Gianluca Pascucci as an international scout. The last three Euroleague games have been Mo’s first, and his playing time is increasing. So far, he has not play in the Italian league because of the limited number of US-born players allowed and that still-pending Italian passport.

The interesting part of the story is that Taylor may get his “open sesame” before the qualification phase for Eurobasket 2009 and his physical play could be a nice asset for an Italian national team still in search of the necessary players to go to Poland in September. So maybe we will see plays like this one in the next few weeks…

The oldest European team in Beijing showed during the tournament that it has come to the end of a cycle. Several German players will end their career in the national team after this tournament, and coach Dirk Bauermann has now four years to rebuild a team to remain competitive.

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This might be one of the most sad games in Germany’s basketball history. Pascal Roller, Germany’s starting point guard announced that he will stop playing after the Olympics. Another German seems to follow him now: Dirk Nowitzki. Of course Nowitzki will keep playing for the Dallas Mavericks, but this might be his last appearance with the German national team ever, meaning somebody else will leave too: Chris Kaman. No Nowitzki, No Kaman – that easy. 

After the terrible loss against China, Team USA – a team that even convinced or suprised the biggest “haters” – is waiting in the last game of group play. Sportingbet’s odds for a win of Germany is 15.00 – a US win equals to … 1.00 – meaning you will not make a dime on betting on Team USA. 

At least Germany is not the only team with bad odds like that – another team is Angola .. way to go Germany!

Stiil, here is the live blog of Pascal Roller, Dirk Nowitzki and Chris Kaman’s last game wearing the German “Adler”.

Beijing Basketball 2008 Olympics

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