BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

Episode #36 of the weekly “Taking the Charge” podcast series is now available online and, if you think the end of the Euroleague season means a paucity of subjects to discuss, well, you don’t know BallinEurope and heinnews once we get started…

At center is an interview with current Team Spain U19s/former Murcia head coach Luis Guil. Guil, who’s tutored the likes of Ricky Rubio, Sergio Rodriguez, Victor Claver, Sergio Llull, Carlos Saurez, Xavier Rabaseda and Alex Abrines among others, tells us about his highs and lows coaching youth hoops plus what he sees as a big Spanish export market for coaches worldwide.

Beyond this, any number of basketball-centric topics are on the radar, including the NBA Draft lottery; those awesome San Antonio Spurs; an incipient player strike in Spain; VTB United League, German Bundesliga and TBL playoffs; and, inevitably, upcoming FIBA tournaments.

And from the We Watch These Things So You Don’t Have To Department is our sports movie review of the week. This time, it’s the distinctly non-epic Bruce Willis flick of 1991, a.k.a. the year American professional football died, The Last Boy Scout. (See below for the wonderfully over-the-top loopy opening scene and ignore the rest. It’s for the best, really…)

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.

Thanks for listening and talk to you next week!

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What say we close out 2012 with a whole bunch of highlight clips? BiE knew you’d be willing. Tomorrow, a list of the most popular BallinEurope stories of the calendar year will be running, but today comes an attempt to encapsulate the past 365 days in European hoops, YouTube style.

From Ibaka’s blocks to the return of Ricky Rubio, from a stunner in Istanbul to a double miracle in Italy, from the US to the Continent and back again, BallinEurope’s got your highlights right here… Continue Reading…

“Pau”, Ramunas have served BiE well…

We’ll be running a poll on this question next week, but please feel free to put forth suggestions in the “comments” section below this post. A few suggested guidelines: Since the winning choice will be immortalized (well, as immortalized as things can get online) in illustrated form, BiE asks that you consider only guys easily caricatured or are at least easily recognizable by the uniform.

After making a few kneejerk-reaction choices, BiE also consulted with this site’s contributing writers and a pilgrim father of BallinEurope. Below runs the tentative list of candidates thus far.

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Gaze into the crystal (basket)ball…

A handful of rights-owned players will be suiting up to play on both sides of the Atlantic over the next eight days, but today BallinEurope takes a slightly wider view beyond these exciting-but-mostly-irrelevant dozen games. Below a look at five players – a bit of a future dream team, perhaps, though desperately seeking a monstrous big man – taken in recent NBA drafts and currently developing in Europe’s higher levels. And yes, there will be highlights.

Your five for the European present and NBA future, then…

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The Houston Rockets may have thrown $2.5 million away if Real Madrid reportedly has its way: According to Spain-based sports news outlet Marca, Sergio Llull has been offered a six-year contract extension with an option year from the Euroleague club. While some have speculated on a scenario in which the Spaniard might join the Rockets for 2013-14, this offer is seemingly designed to scupper any such plans.

The Rockets are said to have made an offer to Llull immediately upon the NBA free-agent signing period opening and were enthused by his play for Team Spain in the 2012 Olympic Games (though BallinEurope not so much). The NBA club owns the rights the Madridista after buying them for $2.5 mil (worth about €2.125 million today) from the Denver Nuggets in 2009; not an unexpected reaction from a team that lost Goran Dragic and Kyle Lowry from the backcourt this offseason.

Marca had reported earlier that Sergio’s father Paco Llull wasn’t too concerned about the Houston option, as his son “is a Real player.”

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From the wire, a few details on the new contract that Team Spain’s Serge Ibaka signed yesterday with NBA Western Conference champs the Oklahoma City Thunder. In sort, The Blocksmith is set to bag $48 million over the next four years…

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In hopes that the Rudy Fernandez flop in the Spain vs. USA gold-medal game goes viral, here’s a soon-to-be-meme of ol’ Rudy demonstrating his skills in the video game medium courtesy Ali Traore. Brilliant stuff.

And for comparison’s sake, here’s the actual melodramatic-unto-artistic flop itself, which as Beckley Mason of ESPN TrueHoop notes “was worthwhile for Fernandez and Spain. By drawing an intentional, rather than a common foul, Fernandez converted a loose ball into two free throws and possession…” Not to mention inducing several million heart attacks among the USA faithful.

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And speaking of Olympic basketball-related fails, the folks over at Bball Headlines this morning post a disturbing number of Tweets from the US from an apparently sizable fraction of the population that has some problem comprehending Pau Gasol’s citizenship. Click the link for “Hint to American girls: [The] Gasols are Spanish.” No, really.

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Even more than Vassilis Spanoulis and Olympiacos, 2012 in basketball has belonged to Lebron James. So it is indeed fitting that the King threw the dagger to earn his Team USA the gold.

At 97-91, a double-digit Team USA had evaporated through some sloppy turnovers in what felt like a momentum change, a Spanish charge. And then Lebron returned, getting the ball, charging through the lane while the BBC play-by-play man was reduced to “uh oh.” Slam, 99-91. “And by uh oh,” quipped BBC guy, “I meant ‘wow.’”

On the next possession, it was James for three. USA 102, Spain 93 and “hope was fading” for Los Rojos.

This after Team Spain had managed a brilliant third quarter, trading leads with the US and perhaps inducing a tiny bit of fear. In lieu of Marc Gasol, the formerly nearly-invisible Serge Ibaka had a swell third quarter, capping it with a block on Deron Williams driving to the basket which might’ve given Team USA a three-point lead to end a quarter in which Spain shot 60% overall – and no threes.

Wire writeup to be posted later, but for now kudos to Lebron James, high-scorer Kevin Durant and Team USA for taking the gold, and to Team Spain for fighting adversity, wear and tear for the silver.

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