NBA Europe fans: SORRY!

Euroleague fans are already disappointed that no Euroleague team will play an NBA team this summer. We still don’t know any reasons for this decision by the Euroleague and NBA, since it would be good competition this year, right?

Since the Euroleague is still not the most interesting league for the average basketball fan, people are really interested in seeing their stars from the United States. As we know and reoprted a few months ago, the Washington Wizards, New Orleans Hornets, Miami Heat and New Jersey Nets will come to Europe to play one another.

Here are the tour dates again:

Paris, Thursday, October 9th: Miami Heat - New Jersey Nets

London, Sunday, October 12th: New Jersey Nets - Miami Heat

Berlin, Tuesday, October 14th: Washington Wizards - New Orleans Hornets

Bacrelona, Friday, October 17th. New Orleans Hornets - Washington Wizards

Especially the second pair of the Wizards and the Hornets seem to be interesting games, since people and NBA fans get to see a great point guard plus another great player and of course personality: Gilbert Arenas!

Well, not so fast.

As has been reported, Gilbert won’t play in Berlin, Barcelona, the Wizards training camp, and even the first month of the NBA regular season. Once again, Gilbert has to have surgery on his knee.

I don’t know about you, but I would have loved to see Gilbert in action and not again on the sidelines. I am sure official partner adidas is not excited about this either, since Gilbert is under contract with them and the Gilbert’s last attempt to promote his sneakers failed badly - again because he was hurt…

Josh Childress considering Europe

Atlanta Hawks free agent Josh Childress is considering his debut in Europe with Euroleague team Olympiakos of Greece: So reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports today.

Josh is taking advantage of his free agency either to either get a better offer from another NBA club, while many think that he is actually considering joining Olympiakos who made him a nice offer to re-enter a more promising free agent market of the NBA in a few years.

Olympiakos is known for bringing in NBA players, as they did with Lynn Greer last season. Now, Josh is not exactly what we would call a NBA superstar, but he can make any team in the NBA better. Why? He actually shares the ball and works for his team.

Should the NBA and NBA fans be scared now that Europe is taking advantage of the weak dollar to lure away their NBA players? With European stars such as Juan Carlos Navarro, internationals like Carlos Delfino, high school standouts such as Brandon Jennings and solid NBA players like Josh Childress, many different players have considered and even joined teams in Europe and the Euroleague.

To me, this is a logic consequence of European basketball getting better. Just take a look at the teams that will participate in the Olympics: Host country China, Americas Champions and runner up USA and Argentina, Asia Champion Iran, African Champion Angola and Oceania Champion Australia. This makes the remainder — six teams out of 12 — European: Spain, as the 2006 FIBA World Champion; European Champion Russia; and European runnerup Lithuania; as well as the just-qualified Germany, Croatia and Greece. A total of six European teams made it to the Olympics.

Of course, for Team USA, anything but THE GOLD is unacceptable as every TEAM USA athlete, man or woman, keeps repeating on TV; this will be a very hard battle, though, especially with Americans joining European teams to make everybody around them better.

Side note: It is said that Olympiakos will go after New Jersey Nets free agent Bostijan Nachbar if the Childress deal doesn’t come through.