BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

With one more week of play in 2011, the competition is tighter than ever in Liga Endesa play. With Real Madrid taking care of business at home against Assignia Manresa and Caja Laboral overcoming the visiting FC Barcelona, the Spanish rivals are tied atop the league standings at 10-2. Statistically, Madrid holds the lead with the Liga’s top-scoring offense at 82.67 points per game giving them a 84-point lead on Barça; naturally the Blaugrana are tops in defense, with a stingy 65.33 points allowed per.

In Madrid, Real went on a 13-2 run early to take a 19-8 lead in the first quarter and never looked back on the way to an 83-61 victory over Manresa (now 5-7 and tied for 11th place). Red-hot Nikola Mirotic contributed his Liga Endesa season high with 20 points in just 23 minutes of play.

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BallinEurope just loves season- and year-ending polls, and every December FIBA Europe offers hoops devotees the opportunity to participate in the naming the Continent’s Players of The Year. And while the winner of the award for 2011 – a.k.a. the Year of Dirk – is surely a no-brainer, the FIBA ballot calls for electors to award a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place vote from among 10 nominees; BiE is finding that no. 3 spot a real mind-bender. If someone can provide a nice salient argument for the final spot, that person will have BiE’s undying admiration.

The process of elimination went the following way, in reverse order of finish, and garnishing with highlight clips.

10. Dimitris Diamantidis, Panathinaikos. Yes, Double-D was the Euroleague MVP and the Euroleague Final Four MVP for 2010-11. Yes, he thus established himself as one of the five or six greatest of the EL modern era. But Diamantidis did not play any international ball, whereas all other nine nominees participated in Eurobasket 2011 and most where instrumental to their team’s successes. Dimitris simply has the shortest CV of a very talented ten.

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The biggest news in terms of individual achievement in last night’s Euroleague games belonged to FC Barcelona’s Juan Carlos Navarro, who became the modern-era Euroleague’s all-time leader in points scored in a career – and so hearty congratulations go out from BallinEurope to La Bomba.

The key bucket – and Navarro’s 2,715th and 2,716th Euroleague points scored since the 2000 revamp to break the mark previously held by Marcus Brown – came in the third quarter, as Barca began to amass their eventual 26-point advantage against Union Olimpija, on a fast-break layup; assist provided by Chuck Eidson, for all the trivia masters out there. Navarro was awarded with a standing ovation from the Palau Blaugrana crowd.

See below for video of Navarro’s feat – he enters the record books at about the 0:45 mark – and a league-held interview.

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You know who benefits from the NBA player lockout? Twitter, that’s who. The website has become an endless source of interest as each event/non-event transpires in the NBA lockout soap opera. Minute to minute, commentators, players, pundits and rumormongers pithily weigh in and/or report on the immediate future of professional basketball in America…

…and Europe! The Continent-centric BallinEurope has unabashedly become addicted to the little birdie’s ‘site, and yesterday proved quite fruitful for those anxiously awaiting more imports into top pan-European and domestic leagues. After the dismal news of Monday and impending dissolution of the players’ union plus imminent anti-trust lawsuits, more and more stars are finally willing to cut the cord to the NBA, bite the bullet and, you know, try that whole European basketball thing.

Below run the results what BiE’s Twitter scorecard from yesterday; stars include the Gasol Brothers, Kevin Durant, Jan Vesely, Joakim Noah, Tiago Splitter, Kyrie Irving and many more.

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Five Euroleague games were played last night and things were interestingly shaken up a bit when the final buzzers sounded. Tonight’s slate looks even nicer, with Montepaschi Siena vs. FC Barcelona and possible instant classic Panathinaikos vs. CSKA Moscow. To get you up to date and ready – plus possibly take up a minutes of your time courtesy YouTube – BallinEurope has compiled a few notes for your perusal presented in time-honored bullet fashion, starring Furkan Aldemir, Bojan Bogdanovic and Juan Carlos Navarro, among others.

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Though Team FYR Macedonia eliminated hosts Lithuania from the 2011 EuroBasket tournament in mid-September, a certain amount of talk-trashing about the match continues in the blogosphere.

Yesterday, FIBA was forced to do a bizarre bit of damage control after Lithuanian media – specifically, who else but powerhouse club sponsor Lietuvos Rytas? – reported that two players competing in EuroBasket had tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs; the piece quoted representatives from the Lithuanian Anti-Doping Agency stated abnormalities had been found and that further testing would have to be done by FIBA on the samples of the two players.

FIBA Europe was quick to deny any such claims, however, soon releasing the following tersely-worded statement on the subject:

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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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The ACB official website (and just about every other Spanish-language outlet for sports news) offers a lengthy piece on Pau Gasol, based on interviews with French newspaper L’Equipe.

Highlighted in the Spanish league reportage is Pau’s line to the effect that “I prefer the European game in the NBA because basketball is a team sport and is more beautiful to watch when players pass the ball or when ball movement creates shots.”

(Gods know what language this interview took place in, so bear in mind that this quote is probably emerging by way of English to French to Spanish and back to English; however, surely the sentiment survives through this mutant translation.)

Gasol also seemingly put to rest any notions of his playing for FC Barcelona this season, stating that he’s only training with the club and that it wouldn’t be “fair” were he activated only to have to return to America for the NBA season. With his addition to the team, Gasol reckons that “the Barça game would change. In the end, my starting the season with the team would penalize them.”

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Right, then. With the last teams advancing into the Euroleague two dozen for the regular season and a break in the Kobe-to-Bologna soap opera today, BallinEurope breaks out an old favorite: power rankings!

Once again, the BallinEurope Euroleague Power Rankings are based on current trends, i.e. who’s hot, who’s not. For this edition of the list, also taken into consideration are offseason acquisitions and a dash of expectations vis-à-vis how these squads will look when the games really start to matter. Let the arguments begin!

1. FC Barcelona – Heard it before? Well, you’ve probably heard about the core of the Barca roster before, too: Juan Carlos Navarro, Pete Mickael, Erazem Lorbek, Victor Sada, Boniface N’dong, Kosta Perovic and Fran Vazquez; getting to add Chuck Eidson and Marcelinho Huertas doesn’t seem fair. In going 8-0 thus far this preseason, the Blaugrana have added to their trophy case with Lliga Catalana and Supercopa Endesa titles and Navarro in particular is still in EuroBasket form. Right now, BiE says this is the team to beat.

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A pair of unsurprising results came in last night, with Euroleague superpowers FC Barcelona and Montepaschi Siena taking national cups.

In the Liga Endesa Supercopa, Barcelona handled Caja Laboral Baskonia, 82-73, for its third consecutive title and its seventh in the past eight years. Stop BiE if you’ve heard this before, but Juan Carlos Navarro was named MVP of the tournament after going for 24 points in the final game; Boniface N’dong contributed a double-double in the final match.

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