BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

You know Tony's coming over...

First, BallinEurope would like to a couple more American players to The Continent, as Milwaukee Bucks second-round draft pick Jon Leuer has signed with the Bundesliga’s Frankfurt Skyliners to play during the NBA lockout and undrafted Colorado State University forward Andy Ogide has joined the ranks of LEB club Breogán.

But as the BiE schadenfreudometer works overtime, the Euroleague Transfers Table loads up with NBA names (Hello, Mr. Farmar and bienvenue to you, Monsieur Batum!), and the working assumption currently figuring the big league to be playing an abbreviated schedule in 2011-12 at best, BallinEurope admits that he’s becoming spoiled about new news on NBA players jumping the Atlantic to play ball here.

And so, without too much hard fact recently on NBAers, marquee or otherwise, making said leap, BiE today presents odds on some players rumored to be plying their wares in Europe soon. Readers should note that these odds are offered at no bookmaker service and are completely arbitrary (which is to say mostly made up).

Dirk Nowitzki: 3/5. The incredible story of the Bayern München basketball club’s resurrection to primacy would be made complete by signing Dastardly Dirk, hero of the 2011 NBA Finals.

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Happy Monday, everyone. To get that week started right, BallinEurope has compiled a healthy-sized video play list at which you may goggle over morning coffee. From all corners of Europe (and Portland, Oregon) came the action last week as the barrage of title-awarding begins on The Continent.

• First up: BiE offers congratulations to Žalgiris Kaunas, who took the Baltic Basketball League title over VEF Riga, 75-67. Tadas Klimavicius was the stud for the “Green White Boys” with a team-high 15 points to go with nine rebounds; Trevon Hughes was game high scorer, contributing 16 for Riga as well as five boards.

The BBL is infuriatingly short on video coverage – even on YouTube – but, um, here’s a swell clip of some rabid fans in that distinctive mode of European basketball…

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“February Madness” begins this week in Europe, with a number of top domestic leagues hosting national cup tournaments; probably tops in pageantry and hype on The Continent is Spain’s Copa del Rey, a hoops bloodbath since 1984. BallinEurope this morning provides a few links, clips and whatnot in preparation for what they just had to call “96 horas de alta tensión.”

• First stop for all interested parties – and especially the Spanish-speakers among you – is the amazing 68-page Madrid ’11 Copa del Rey program guide; this is really just a swell production.

• The ACB is well-organized, Twitterily-speaking, as well. The league promises to tweet it up during the tournament and even have a hashtag (it’s #CopaACB) so that “No te pierdas ni un detalle de la Copa del Rey.”

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It may be slightly foolish-bordering-on-irresponsible to lament the woes of a traditional powerhouse that’s currently 5-2 overall and (at least for a few more hours) leads the ACB table, but hey. What’s up with Real Madrid?

In Tomic they trust

Yesterday saw Ettore Messina’s 4-0 Madrid visit 0-4 El Meridiano Alicante, perhaps too expectantly thinking “win.” Knee-jerk reactions from yours truly are below – but first to the video clip and translated official ACB writeup!

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The 2010-11 Euroleague season tips off tomorrow? Right, then. Presenting the last preseason – and thus last totally subjective, because we’ll be able to base these things on, you know, wins and losses beginning next week – BallinEurope Official Euroleague Power Rankings™. (Plus lots of video clips.) Enjoy!

1. (↔) FC Barcelona – Yeah, as though we didn’t know how good Barça was going to be this season, they went and bored down behind mighty Pete Mickael to take out the Los Angeles Lakers at home. In addition, they’re 3-0 in ACB play thus far while outscoring opponents by an average of 82-68, the Human YouTube Clip has added a couple more highlights to the infinite reel, Juan Carlos Navarro has been “¡espectacular,” et cetera.

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Spain’s ACB tipped off action last night, opening the season with Asefa Estudiantes hosting Real Madrid in front of 13,000 at Palacio De Deportes Comunidad De Madrid. The Euroleaguers emerged in “la mejor forma posible,” 84-79, after facing a knotted-up first quarter and a surprising five-point first-half deficit.

Looking for redemption after a 34-point blowout loss to FC Barcelona in the Spanish Super Cup, Real Madrid was back in form last night, even if they couldn’t stop Los Estudiantes’ outside shooting in the first half.

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Here’s a must-read for you, courtesy of Free Darko and Salon.com. After “sitting on this for a year,” Salon.com writer/editor Ethan Sherwood Strauss contributes his “The Spaniard’s Bar Mitzvah,” a story of “escorting” Ricky Rubio to and fro the 2009 NBA Draft in New York City. Excellent stuff for Rubio fans, not to mention those just into good old-fashioned you-are-there journalism.

(For those of you into new-fashioned YouTube journalism, see below the break for flashbacks to 2009 and Kobe Bryant expostulating on Rubio and the NBA’s foreign players.)

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Arnold, in his Maccabi Tel Aviv days

Olimpia Armani Jeans Milano have officially announced the signing of 35-year-old veteran forward/centre Jamie Arnold from Peristeri Athens, until the end of the season, or two regular-season games: The move was made mainly to help strengthen the team’s playoff chances against the likes of Montepaschi Siena, NGC Cantu and Pepsi Caserta.

After playing his college ball at Wichita State back in the 1990s, Arnold came to Europe in search of some solid competition. He played his first season in Belgium for Houthalen in the 1997-98 season and has since played for eight different teams, including European powerhouses such as Maccabi Tel Aviv and DKV Joventut Badalona (the latter a.k.a. Ricky Rubio and Rudy Fernandez’ old playground).

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On Saturday, perhaps the marquee matchup on the ACB slate – if for historical significance only – will be the FC Barcelona vs. Unicaja match. The league’s official website has quite the extensive collection of facts ‘n’ figures about this match and the 15-year record of meetings between these two clubs, of which BallinEurope attempted to extract the most useful bits.

The vital stats
The game tips off in Barcelona (you can watch it live online at ACB 360). Barça attempts to continue its home-winning streak, now at 28 games. Unicaja is riding a three-game win streak in the ACB, its second such this season.

Jimenez and Navarro: Team Spain’s last two captains face off
Carlos Jimenez passed Spain’s national team captaincy baton to former Memphis Grizzlies/current Blaugrana player Juan Carlos Navarro this past summer. With Navarro at the head, Spain took the 2009 Eurobasket title. Of course, under Jimenez, the Spainards took gold in Japan at the FIBA World Championship in 2006.

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Just in case international youth basketball fans weren’t sated by the recent Albert Schweitzer and Nike Hoop Summit youth tournaments, perhaps the upcoming Jordan Brand Classic in New York today will go a bit further in sating the craving. Three games will be played between some of the world’s finest U18 players.

Game two of the tripleheader puts 16 non-U.S. players in the limelight, as “Black” and “White” teams have been drawn at random from the stock of internationals. Originally, a full 10 of these 16 were representing The Continent, with Lithuania, Serbia and France each claiming two spots.

Thanks to our old friend Eyjafjallajoekull, however, some changes have been made. Vasilije Micic and Nikola Jankovic of Serbia cannot make the trip; also out is Nigeria’s Christopher Obekpa. In for the internationals will be Italian point guard Matteo Ibro and two guard Albert Homs of Spain; replacing Obekpa will be Anthony Bennett of Canada. The roster switch-up now gives Spain and Italy two players each in the game.

The book on the Europeans in the Jordan Classic looks something like the following.

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