BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

Sasha? Really?

It’s perhaps the most famous Euroleague-related trivia question, and this season sees two more players in a quest to join the likes of a noted half-dozen, including some of the game’s all-time greats – would you believe that duo seeking to join this elite are named Sasha Vujacic and Jordan Farmar?

The €20,000 question is of course, “Which players have won both Euroleague and NBA titles?” Hint: There are six in total, and two are Americans. Guess before clicking “Read More…” to test your skills – BiE’s trusting you to stay away from Google searches and Wikipedia…

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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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With BallinEurope temporarily stationed in the USA, the business-as-usual machinations of top European clubs and preparations of national teams for Eurobasket 2011 threaten to be lost in a squall of speculation about the NBA lockout – of which amazingly little progress is being seen, by the way. And so, BiE has a few bulleted thoughts, quips and links this morning (afternoon CET time) on Deron Williams and his ilk.

• If Williams in fact does suit up for Beşiktaş Cola Turka come September, won’t he be the first Team USA team member to play in Europe since the days of the (totally awesome) Dirty Dozen? Come to think of it, Trajan Langdon and the guys wouldn’t have even been in USA colors in 1998 had it not been for … a player lockout. Hmmm…

• As for Kobe Bryant joining D-Will and Zaza with Beşiktaş, American media is all over this story despite recent (assumed impermanent) sanctions against club. Coach Ergin Ataman’s quote is getting lots of play already before much of the country even awakens this morning: “It is a fact that Kobe Bryant’s managers have contacted us.”

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Scalabrine to introduce Eurubuntu?

Last night, wires began reporting that Sonny Weems of the Toronto Raptors has already reached an agreement in Europe. Though reports “did not specify which team Weems would play for,” sources indicated that “Weems is in the process of signing a one-year contract and will remain in Europe for 2011-12, even if owners and players were to find a way to solve their differences and salvage the NBA season.”

Weems is currently in Spain with fellow Raptor Jose Calderón at a youth basketball camp, immediately leading BiE to speculate that Weems will be playing for some ACB side in ‘11 – perhaps Caja Laboral Baskonia, with whom Calderón played for five seasons…? The presence of DeMar DeRozan at said camp also makes one wonder about this possibility.

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Innovative English-language student tutorial website English, baby! has added another European baller to its stable of celebrity guest teachers as Zaza Pachulia of the Atlanta Hawks educates on a couple of key contemporary terms vis-à-vis fashion sense. Reads press material, “The 7-foot Georgian recently invited English, baby! to his hotel room in Portland to go over his outfit for that night’s game and teach some fashion slang.”

In any case, Pachulia answers a couple minutes’ worth of questions about his natty attire for English, baby!, most importantly defining the verb “to sport.” Viewers may also enjoy some of Zaza’s philosophy on sartorial matters, such as the importance of wearing jeans (but only classy jeans) that are a bit higher up than normal. You know, so everyone can see the socks. Get schooled by Pachulia here.

For a bonus lesson at the same virtual ESL school, see Pachulia below explaining the all-important slang term “swag.”

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Say what you want about sending two lottery-level NBA clubs on a cross-Atlantic trip to play a pair of ultimately meaningless games, but not one of the 18,500-plus in attendance for the Toronto Raptors-New Jersey Nets game last night can fairly complain about not getting his/her money’s worth.

Those attending the O2 Arena for the Saturday night festivities got a whole lot of action, as the teams went into triple overtime before the Nets finally overcame by a huge final score of 137-136 while wowing thousands and naturally breeding the blogosphere and YouTube. News ‘n’ notes from the game follow.

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"Ladies, ladies, I don't mean to brag, but ... I'm the greatest."

“I know I can score 20 or 30 points anytime I want,” Vujacic said, as reported by the Newark Star-Ledger. “But I’m not that kind of a guy. I want to win. I want to play the right way. Some games I’m going to get 10 shots, some games 15 shots; sometimes, especially coming off the bench, you’re going to feel cold, and you need time to get in the rhythm. But right now, what I care the most is for us to become a better team. And we are really capable of doing that.”

The occasion for the media attention given Sasha and his subsequent verbosity was a glorious 103-101 overtime win for the New Jersey Nets over the New Orleans Hornets last Wednesday. Vujacic went for a career-high 40 points 35 points 25 points.

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Sasha Vujacic will be sitting out a few days – “indefinitely” in leaguespeak – thanks to a concussion suffered during Thursday night’s team practice.

According to the Los Angeles Lakers official blog:

“Lakers guard Sasha Vujacic suffered a concussion after being inadvertently struck in the face, just below the left eye, by an errant elbow from Lamar Odom in Thursday’s practice.

“Vujacic will be monitored closely and reevaluated on Friday, but for now is considered out indefinitely from basketball activity.”

And for no good reason whatsoever, BiE presents another of Laker-Fan’s awesome Machine Videos from last season below the break. As Agent Smith says, “Never send a man to do a machine’s job.” Even if it’s seeing stars, apparently…

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Gortat will school you -- in a good way

As an ESL teacher in his other identity, yours truly was happy to find out about a website called “English, Baby!” and was even more intrigued to find that the faculty includes Rodrigue Beaubois, Marc Gasol, Marcin Gortat, Sergio Rodriguez and Sasha Vujacic.

English, Baby! is something of a full-service website for those interested in learning or refining their skills in English as a second-language, with information about TOEFL exams, in-house teachers to assist with questions, forums, and lesson materials.

Essentially each “lesson” on the website – and there appear to be thousands of them – is a webpage which includes a short video done in actual interview style plus seven to twelve vocabulary words, a primer reading to prepare for what you’ll see/hear in the video, a transcript, grammar points (don’t worry; they’re mostly painless), quick quizzes and discussion topics. You can even download the whole thing as an MP3 file once you register with the site.

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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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