BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

Just because the NBA Draft is over, the big league is heading toward a lockout, and the top European teams are thick into the wheeling/dealing of off-season acquisitions with an eye to 2011-12, that’s no reason to forget your history. Were you paying attention this season? Test your knowledge with the official BallinEurope 2010-11 season-ending pop quiz. (And you thought your semester was over…)

The quiz is multiple choice and is European- and NBA-centric in topic. It is multiple guess choice, and so choose the one answer that best completes the phrase or answers the question. You may use any writing implement at your disposal to fill in the answers – as long as you don’t mind marking up your screen, that is. Good luck. You may begin the exam now.

1. In the 2010-11 season, Dirk Nowitzki became most known for:
a) Being a clutch player, despite an arguably disappointing past history.
b) Entering the conversation as one of the NBA’s top 20 players of all-time.
c) Passing 22,000 career NBA points.
d) Take Dat Wit Chew.

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And Euroleague action is back for week nine action. Tonight’s slate of games is fit to make the playoff picture clearer. Lietuvos Rytas is in with a win, whereas a Khimki win or an Asseco Prokom loss gets the Moscow region team into the final 16.

According to the bookmakers, the marquee game to watch tonight amidst a lot of mismatches is clearly the game at Belgrade. The inconsistent Lietuvos Rytas can thank its current 1-3 run for its status as a five-point underdog at Partizan, and a double-digit loss would hardly be surprising for the Lithuanians at Pionir, where the black-and-white haven’t lost this season since opening day.

Also a must for viewing and tempting for punting is the Khimki-AJ Milano matchup. To say that Milano’s porous defense – they’ve managed to hold a Euroleague opponent to under 68 points just once this season – has been disappointing would be an understatement but makes for great high-scoring viewing if you’re not a fan. The Italians will be looking to salvage their hopes for advancement while avenging their week three loss to Khimki: Surely this team is too talented not to cover that pointspread of nine and that 146.5 will be toast. Go over.

Pointspreads and over/under lines for tonight’s Euroleague games, as provided by Euroleague/Ball in Europe sponsor Sporting Bet, run below the break.

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Wrapping up and putting a bow on week six of Euroleague basketball is BallinEurope’s man in Italy, Francesco Cappelletti, who today writes of Kleiza & Papaloukas, the Partizan player-making machine, and the league’s three biggest flops thus far in 2009-10.

Dear old Theo
Linas Kleiza has made us witnesses to what a former NBA sixth man is able to do: namely, score 19 points in 10 minutes, with all of his production coming in the last period, when Olympiacos seemed very close to its third consecutive loss outside of Athens. Kleiza scored from outside, going to the rim, penetrating, and in the final 24 seconds was simply unstoppable.

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It’s Monday morning and that means news! A handful of news briefs, columns and video to tip off your own week this week. Enjoy!

•  The biggest domestic-league game of the weekend? How about Panathinaikos vs. Olympiacos in Greece on Sunday? Behind Josh Childress (6-of-9 shooting to got with 10 rebounds), Olympiacos prevailed, 87-76, to become the league’s only 5-0 team. Panathinaikos was dropped to 4-1 and into a tie with Panellinios after the loss. Childress will be leaving the team for an indeterminate period to attend the funeral of his father, who died on Friday.

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Hello, everybody, this is Javier Gancedo from Euroleague headquarters once again. Hope you all enjoyed the Euroleague break; it’s good for us to have a week off so early in the season. I had the chance to start doing features for the Final Four page. When the Final Four page is launched, there is one tell-all interview with a basketball legend in particular that will shock you!

Life is good here in Barcelona: Euroleague basketball is back, Christmas is just around the corner, and my team Cajasol won five of its last six games. We needed, like, 25 games to get that fifth win last season. I’m heading down to Fuenlabrada for our road game on Saturday. People may wonder why, being in the Euroleague and talking to a lot of great players and coaches, I chose to be a Cajasol fan. Well, first of all, I am from Sevilla – and proud of it! And second, you are what you are: Once a Cajasol fan, always a Cajasol fan.

Anyway, enough is enough – Let’s start with the Fantasy Challenge. I had to give may team much thought this week, even though I haven’t traded yet: I always do that while writing this column. It’s all about game philosophy of accumulating more money or trying to find underrated superstars. I didn’t expect to be playing for money for so long, but I decided to do so one more time; therefore I will trade players that I think are already overrated and go for moneymakers.

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In the afterglow of Euroleague week four, BallinEurope’s man in Italy, Francesco Cappelletti, rounds up all that was in the week that was, including the lack of upsets, a dearth of home support in Turkey, and several teams that have yet to make the leap.

Easy groups
At the day of the Euroleague draw, most of us said Group C was the toughest, with four teams able to reach last Top 16 (Caja Laboral, Lottomatica Roma, CSKA Moscow, Maccabi Tel Aviv) and two representatives of the fighting Balkan-Greek spirit in Maroussi BC and Union Olimpija. Group D followed C, with a combination of newly ambitious squads (AJ Milano, Real Madrid), national champions (Asseco Prokom, EWE Baskets), and the dangerous Khimki Moscow and Panathinaikos to boot.

Now that four weeks are over, it’s right to say all those forecasts have gone south, because we have not seen a surprising upset since Euroleague tipped off. Big clubs lose games only against each other, and rarely have they left points in lower courts: Among the 48 matches played thus far, we are astonished only by Lietuvos Rytas’ win against Efes Pilsen in week 1. Maroussi grazed at an upset victory in its debut but Viktor Khryapa denied them; after this … nothing.

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Trying to give more oomph and interesting themes to a league dominated by Panathinaikos and Olympiacos ever since 1992, the Greek Federation opened the doors to a third non-European player per team in a move aimed to achieve a better balance between those teams whose goals are merely to challenge by only attempting toapproach the Greens and Reds’ dominion.

Instead, most Greek clubs have serious economic problems, so that this third non-European initially seen as a hypothetical step forward in quality typically features a young American boy just out of college. In a few words, the strengthened Pana-Oly are still the only title contenders; behind them is something, but the race to Esake’s crown is closed to the two old rivals.

 

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And so we go into Euroleague 2009-10 week one, part two (or part three if you count the Maccabi Tel Aviv-Olimpija game which took place seemingly so long ago), with five games playing out tonight. For those interested in making it more interesting, Euroleague/BallinEurope.com sponsor Sporting Bet has posted numerous odds and lines on which to wager – and even if you’re not the betting sort, these numbers provide some nice discussion fodder.

Sporting Bet’s pointspreads and over/under lines run below.

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Along with the obligatory odds for outright winner of the big enchilada, the bookmakers at Euroleague/Ball in Europe sponsor Sporting Bet have also released odds on your team to make the Final Four – well, OK, especially if your team is Greece- or Spain-based. And speaking of those twin national teams, what are the odds (literally) that none of them are playing in Paris? Read on!

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The worst thing about NBA basketball? That’s easy: The team names! What with the rapid franchise movement and just incomprehensible obsession with the uncountable noun, American professional basketball is simply bogged down with names that are mostly laughingly displaced (e.g. Los Angeles Lakers, Utah Jazz, Memphis Grizzlies), generic (e.g. Atlanta Hawks, New Orleans Hornets, Phoenix Suns), and those groaningly stupid in their impossibility to properly visually represent (Miami Heat, Orlando Magic and the brutally bad Oklahoma City Thunder).

All in all, aside from maybe the Philadelphia 76ers, the league at the supposed epicenter of international sports marketing consists of two-dozen teams none of which you’d ever want to be seen purchasing, much less wearing.

Then, there’s Europe. With some 600 major teams on The Continent alone, there’s got to be some beauties among the team names, even if there is a tragic amount of sponsors subverting the proper name of a given club. (Seriously, is there a lamer name in basketball than “Armani Jeans Milano”? I thought not.)

Without further ado, then, here is Ball in Europe’s official and prestigious “Top 12 Team Names in European Basketball” list, culled from hundreds of prospective squads. Hopefully, someone in Seattle and/or wherever the NBA’s 31st and 32nd franchises might be located is reading…

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