BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

With the vote on whether to allow Team Britain automatic entry into the 2012 London Olympic Games set to take place on Sunday in Lyons, FIBA Secretary General Patrick Baumann has released a statement to media regarding the criteria for this decision-making process.

Much of the verbiage is along the lines FIBA suddenly demanded of British basketball associations last September, namely that an Olympic bid might depend on the willingness and/or feasibility of merging pro basketball’s governing bodies in England, Scotland and Wales. On this point, Baumann at least admits that FIBA has been “criticised for ‘moving the goalposts’ on qualification.”

Baumann’s statement reads as follows.

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‘Stateside, this weekend saw the tipping off of college basketball across the country and, while most prospects from The Continent are avoiding the Kanter treatment to simply play with club teams here, BallinEurope still has eyes on a handful of European players looking to make an impact in the NCAA in 2010-11. Our official preseason NCAA All-European team comprises the following players, quite a few of which should be playing high-level professional hoops before all is said and done.

• Patrik Auda, Czech Republic; Seton Hall. Kevin Willard got something of a nice working holiday this spring as he checked out players at the Carnarias Basketball Academy in the Canary Islands. The fans were then gifted with their new 6’9” lefty forward in Auda. Willard and his recruiters reportedly had an eye on Auda throughout last season, including the Czechs’ personal highlight of an All-Tournament Team nod for the National Prep School Invitational held in Rhode Island in February.

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Parker leads 11 French NBAers

With NBA teams starting to get warmed up for the regular season tipoff, BallinEurope figured it high time to take stock of the European players prospectively set to take the court in America for 2010-11.

In considering the expanded rosters for each of the 30 NBA teams, BiE counted 50 players from The Continent plus one free agent. The asterisk here is Linas Kleiza, who carries an American passport and in fact has played organized ball in the ‘States since high school, but hey: He’s a Team Lithuania guy, so he makes this list.

A country-by-country tally produces some interesting results. France again leads all non-U.S. nations in supplying players. In fact, had Yakhouba Diawara not taken his talents out of South Beach in favor of Italia Serie A’s New Basket Brindisi, the ineffable signing of Papa Sy would have given La Republique a potential full roster of 12 NBA players.

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If you’re a player that needs to be seen to hook up with a European club for the 2010-11, BallinEurope.com can recommend a unique program that is guaranteed to get you noticed by scouts and coaches from all over The Continent.

New York-based talent agency Performance Sports Management is holding its innovative “2010 Ireland Showcase” event from September 2-7 in Belfast, and there’s still plenty of time for you to get yourself one of 20 roster spots in the four-team tournament.

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See you in Atlanta -- i mean, Oklahoma City -- Tibor!

While there may be a dearth of European rookies actually cracking NBA squads in 2009-10, at least the rights to a quartet of promising Continental players have been picked up on draft night.

Despite a recent injury and thus a lack of NBA combine workout, Kevin Seraphin was the first European player selected in 2010, going just outside the lottery range at no. 17 overall by the Chicago Bulls.

At first seeming to be a teamup of Team France players in Chicago – hey, BiE’d like to see the Joakim Noah-Seraphin duo together in the NBA – Seraphin will actually be serving as trade bait.

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UK-based Sporting Life recently posted an couple of articles regarding the odd state of the national program and which insinuate FIBA’s greater concern with basketball in the country.

On Monday, the ‘paper presented a long interview with FIBA secretary-general/International Olympic Committee inspector Patrick Baumann. Among other issues, Baumann spoke at length about what he and the organization fear could be the transitory nature of hoops development there; Great Britain basketball “needs long-term support,” he says.

Team Great Britain faces quite an interesting problem heading into the country’s hosting of the 2012 Olympic Games. Whilst a host nation would typically automatically be granted a bid for their national basketball team, FIBA and IOC have essentially created a prerequisite for Britain before that bid is given, i.e. the team must put in some sort of respectable showing in a major international tournament this summer or next.

This in turn would imply that the British national program has been given an ultimatum: Perform in EuroBasket 2011 or else.

The British national team has only appeared in the Olympic Games once – in 1948! – and the most memorable game the recently-resurrected squad has played in recent memory was a loss: the 2009 Eurobasket game which had Spain more than a bit nervous well into the fourth quarter with the Brits leading 73-69.

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It’s official: Great Britain’s 1991-born Ryan Richards has declared for the NBA Draft: According to UK-based Basketball 24/7, the British power forward/centre currently playing for Swiss first-division club BBC Monthey (on loan from the ACB’s Gran Canaria 2014) will enter this year’s NBA Draft.

Unfortunately, I can’t for the life of me understand why he would do this … yes, Richards is a 6’10”, 235 lb. big man with extreme amounts of potential, but he is not considered one of Europe’s top prospects in most mock drafts (unlike Donatas Motiejunas, Jan Vesely and Miroslav Raduljica) and he doesn’t have the experience or skills that a lot of these players have.

Richards is not, like some European big men, playing on their national teams (even though Great Britain has a relatively weak national squad), though Richards has played well at international tournaments such as the Future Stars 2009 event in the UK and last year’s European championship against opposition from Spain and Poland. He is however, lacking some key fundamentals, a key go-to move, experience and the skills that a lot of Americans can provide.

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While basketball continues to grow all over the Continent, reaching the popularity level of no. 1 or 2 sport in nearly every country from Portugal to Russia, the countries of the British Isles have notoriously lagged behind in hoops enthusiasm. Maybe it’s simply the overwhelming lure of traditional pastimes like soccer, rugby, cricket and Gaelic games, but a general lack of convincing participation at international levels has dampened the perception of the British, Scottish and Irish games so much that the England Olympic Committee finds itself in the bizarre position of hosting an Olympic Games and not receiving an automatic bid for its basketball team.

Hoping to change that status a bit are Newcastle Eagles and coach Paul Blake. Claiming a “responsibility” to some players, Blake is lobbying FIBA for entrance into the organization’s EuroChallenge tournament in 2010.

“This club has never been as close to entering European competition. We are very serious about trying to make this work,” Blake told Chronicle Live. “We are just drilling down the figures at the moment but we have put the calls into FIBA, they are aware of our interest.”

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On Monday, certainly to much pomp and fanfare, FIBA officials will announce the four “wild card” entries that will round out the 2010 World Championship field of 24. The world may indeed be watching, with basketball fans in up to 15 nations truly believing their national team will be named, but is this a serious case of overhyped ado about nothing or could we be surprised?

Aside from some actual on-court results, i.e. the given team must have played in its continental qualifying tournament (so so long Italy), FIBA officials congregating to hash this selection out will consider other aspects of the country’s national program. These include certain sporting aspects, economic aspects (read: marketing potential), and governance aspects. The detailed list may be seen here, but, again, think marketability.

The list of contenders is fairly-well agreed upon and should be mostly reflected by the FIBA rankings themselves.

(As an aside, please note that Ball in Europe in no way endorses the frankly often bizarre FIBA rankings. Seriously, Argentina above Spain *and* Team USA? Russia at no. 17, five spots below Angola? We could go on and on … in any case, we’ll work under the assumption that FIBA takes its own rankings into consideration in situations such as determining wild cards for international tournaments.)

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A serious grab bag of entries from around the blogosphere this week, though in light of international tours, David Stern’s vague non-proclamations, and the imminent tipoff to the season, all things basketball were a bit overshadowed by the NBA beast. Except, perhaps, for one very nice mini-documentary on Lithuanian ball…

Happy surfing, everyone!

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