BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

Episode #39 of the weekly “Taking the Charge” podcast series is now available online.

Co-host David Hein and BiE have kept this one mercifully (relatively) short. Recorded directly after game three of the San Antonio Spurs-Miami Heat NBA championship – not to mention directly thereafter game two of the Liga Endesa finals, game two of the Greek League finals and game one of Italy’s Serie A championship series – we do touch upon some happenings in these, but at center…

…is an interview with Dirk Bauermann, former head coach of Team Germany and Bayern Munich and currently with Team Poland and Lietuvos Rytas. Bauermann talks to us about his hopes for his new charges in Eurobasket 2013 (unfortunately seemingly without Marcin Gortat), what to expect from L. Rytas next season and, naturally, on earning his keep in the great basketball state of Lithuania.

As for the sports movie of the week film review, we check out probably the greatest baseball movie you’ve never heard of, namely The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings.

Check out the entire podcast here or to subscribe from this episode ad infinitum, enter http://heinnews.com/feed/taking-the-charge/ into iTunes or any podcast aggregator.

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Because it’s never too early to start looking ahead to Eurobasket 2013 – wait a minute, there’s only 11 weeks left until tipoff? Definitely not too early, then, to take a look at the formative rosters for the big Continental tournament.

While only a few national teams (Croatia and Lithuania among them) have released preliminary rosters at this point and a few major leagues still playing (Spain, Greece, Germany, Italy, etc.), we can at least deduce which NBA players will or won’t be playing. After all, the rosters of 93.3% of NBA teams have finished their 2012-13 season – and the Miami Heat have no Europeans!

Below is a rundown of each team and the status of their potential NBA players. A few high-profile draft choices and rights-owned guys expected to jump over soon are also peppered in, along with links to appropriate sources. If you find/hear of anything relevant to the list, please comment below.
And we’ll do this group by group…

Group A
Belgium – no current NBA players

France – Kevin Seraphin (Washington Wizards) is out for ’13 but hints he’ll be back in the future.

Ten days ago, based on a L’Equipe report, website Catch-and-Shoot described Joakim Noah (Chicago Bulls)’ Eurobasket status as *très incertain*, and after another punishing NBA season seems unlikely.

No official word on Nicolas Batum (Portland), though the Trail Blazers reportedly be “watching Batum’s injury” this offseason. Perhaps some discouragement is forthcoming…?

France-based media outlet Figaro reported back in May that Ian Mahinmi (Indiana Pacers) and Ronny Turiaf (Los Angeles Clippers) would play; this may have been speculation based on prior results, but Turiaf’s presence on Les Blues for this tournament has been on coach Collet’s mind for a while.

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As one of the world’s most prestigious protracted workouts for youth ballers, the Adidas Eurocamp will certainly produce innumerable highlight clips at which to gawk in the leadup to the NBA Draft (not to mention Europe’s 2013-14 seasons) … but BallinEurope may already have a favorite.

Courtesy Hoops Fix, here’s Edgaras Ulanovas of Lithuania showing how to flick in a three-pointer … from about three-quarters the length of the court – if a half-second too late to count.

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Sarunas Jasikevicius may be 37 years old and has finished this Euroleague season with FC Barcelona in a somewhat disappointing fourth place, but Lithuania-based Krepsinis.net has some very good news for this all-time great’s fans (and fans of European basketball in general). Ending the speculation that’s been dogging him for the past season or two, Saras told the website earlier this week that “This is certainly not my last season, because basketball is not a job: It’s a dream.”

Saras repeated similar sentiments in post-game interviews tonight, but not quite as poetically. See you next year, Mr. Jasikevicius!

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Time may be running out all over European domestic leagues, but there’s well enough left for addition to the year’s best plays list – and this one certainly qualifies.

Check out Nemanja Nedovic destroying from behind a would-be dunk by Prienai’s Gediminas Orelikas in Lietuvos Rytas’ 75-67 LKL quarterfinal win last night. Note the strange physics involved as it is Nedovic who continues flying off the screen while Orelikas stays put in the key in dismay.

Nedovic added 20 points, four assists, four boards and two steals to this thunderous stat and must be considered an early nominee for Sportando European Team of the Week consideration…

Shout out to YouTube user M@nt@s for the post!

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The news is just gaining steam in the blogosphere now and, if true, it’s potentially quite sad news indeed for Linas Kleiza of Team Lithuania and the Toronto Raptors…

Update: But wait! Within 15 minutes of BiE posting this story, original English-language source Lithuania basketball reassures us that “And just as a clarification & update, Kleiza’s camp says career not in threat. Phew…” Original story, posted at about 11:20am CET, follows.

According to Lithuania-based 15min and soon thereafter this morning translated into English and run by Lithuania Basketball’s Simonas Baranauskas, Kleiza is certainly done for this season, is all but ruled out for Eurobasket 2013 play and in fact his career itself may be “in jeopardy.”

These sources report that “the first arthroscopic surgery, which was performed by Dr. J. Richard Steadman in Colorado in 2011, might not have gone fully according to plan…

“According to the former head of the Lithuanian national team’s delegation and a good friend of Kleiza, Antanas Guoga, it is likely that the surgery will need to be repeated…”

15min.lt quoted Guoga as stating “I’ve heard that the surgery didn’t go right, that there were some mistakes [in the rehabilitation process] after the injury. It’s not good that he underwent surgery in the United States. You can’t turn the clock back, but things might have been different if it had been Lithuanian medics…”

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Episode #23 — a belated 50th birthday gift to His Airness, then — in the heinnews/BallinEurope-coproduced “Taking the Charge” podcast series is now available online.

David Hein and yours truly feature two interviews this time out, fortuitously timed in the wake of last week’s Brose Baskets Bamberg-Zalgiris Kaunas cliffhanger. First up is Marko Popovic, Zalgiris’ hero in the game for, as coolly as ice, sinking three consecutive free throws with literally 0.0 left on the clock in overtime for the Greens’ win. Popovic speaks candidly on the off-court transactions affecting Zalgiris’ play particularly in the Euroleague Top 16 round and about Team Croatia’s chances in the FIBA Eurobasket 2013 tourney.

Also joining us for some jibber-jabber is Bamberg scouting director Brendan Rooney, who not only tells us exactly what his job is and how a St. Louis native ended up in Germany, but also sheds some light on his team’s woes in the big league this season.

Finally, our sports movie review feature this week is a good ol’ double feature — though both flicks are only marginally related to sport. We look at the 1951 Alfred Hitchcock classic “Strangers on a Train” and the Strangers-inspired “Throw Momma From the Train” starring high-profile Los Angeles Clippers fan Billy Crystal back in 1987.

This entire episode of “Taking the Charge” may be downloaded here. Thanks for listening and talk to you next week!

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Episode #20 of the heinnews/BallinEurope co-produced Taking the Charge podcast is now available online. This week, that hardworking David Hein and yours truly natter on a bit about recent Euroleague developments (poor, poor Maccabi Tel Aviv!), the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Los Angeles Lakers before finally finding some focus in Lithuania.

As BiE continuously says, something’s always happening in Lithuanian basketball and recent times are no exception. Freelance hoops writer/BallinEurope agent in Lietuva, Karolis Jankus gives us a little inside dope on topics including:

• Zalgiris Kaunas and the strange culture of losing theorized about on BallinEurope earlier in the week;

• Team Lithuania head coach Jonas Kazlauskas and the strange events which led to his current gig in the CBA with Boss Wang’s Guangdong Southern Tigers;

• Lithuania Basketball Federation secretary-general Mindaugas Balčiūnas, currently under house arrest while prosecutors “are carrying out a pre-trial investigation into alleged jobbery, fraud, document forgery and [...] illegal use of municipal funds for the reconstruction of the Hotel Romantic” in connection with Eurobasket 2011;

• the perhaps unfairly languishing Donatas Motiejunas, who at least must be praised for attitude and work ethic while running up the DNPs; and

• Lietuvos Rytas’ recent victory in its Nike Invitational Junior Tournament bracket, tourney MVP Edvinas Seskus and other Lithuanian prospects.

And our sports movie review of the week is all about the Academy Award-nominated film Silver Linings Playbook, starring Bradley Cooper, Chris Tucker, Robert DeNiro and Jennifer Lawrence (swoon). Tangentially related to sport at best (Philadelphia Eagles worship colors the reels), hey, it still has Jennifer Lawrence.

The entire podcast may be heard here. Thanks for listening and talk to you next week!

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In an extensive 15-minute interview, Žalgiris Kaunas head coach Joan Plaza manages to pack in quite enough to make Greens fans highly optimistic about the future.

While not commenting on his boss, Žalgiris’ notoriously wacky owner Vladimir Romanov, the Spanish mastermind does fearlessly take on heavy questions of race and culture. Plaza is admirably learning Lithuanian and emphasizes how important it is to learn that second (or third) language to communicate with players – but finds certain attitudes toward 21st-century multiculturalism a “little shock” in his country of residence.

On the plus side, Plaza sees hope and promises that he is devoted to “working on creating a new generation of [Lithuanian] players” and that he “can’t imagine” leaving Žalgiris with his long-term plan in mind.

(Sudden thought: Might we someday see Plaza helming Team Lithuania?)

Plaza also manages to get in a plug for his novel-writing (!), with his 2009 book Les Mantes de L’Angelina translated into Lithuanian and a second tome set for spring 2013 release in Spain. While the latest novel is not about basketball, its female protagonist (!!!) is a character “fighting for dreams,” a theme Plaza knows something about.

The full interview runs below.

kava su IQ_ Joan Plaza from Intelligent Media on Vimeo.

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Quite a poor turn of events in one of BallinEurope’s Eurocentric NBA storylines to follow in 2012-13 this morning as the Houston Rockets announced the demotion of Lithuania’s Donatas Motiejunas to the NBDL’s Rio Grande Valley Vipers.

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