BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

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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Those in the know about European basketball (or sport, really) need no introduction to either of these storied franchises who add another chapter to the annals tonight: Panathinaikos Athens goes to Barcelona to take on the Blaugrana in a decisive game five Euroleague quarterfinal match – after one heck of a series thus far.

Hyperbolization of these teams’ history – not to mention the nail-biting, cliffhanging suspense of this very playoff series – would be difficult and doing so would be bland. So BallinEurope will simply say that the series between these two clubs has Panathinaikos with a 15-12 overall advantage historically, and let’s get to the YouTubes. Enjoy quite a fascinating collection of a virtual Who’s Who of highlights; once again, YouTube rules.

(Incidentally, if this collection seems slightly PAO-biased, apologies. Perhaps the Greek side’s fans are ahead in the video-sharing sphere as well…)

Panathinaikos and Barcelona met under the proper Euroleague banner at the very tail end of the 1993-94 season. In the third-place game, Nikos Gallis capped another EL scoring- and assist-leading season (23.8 and 4.7 per game, respectively) by leading PAO to a 100-83 win in the first game between the clubs in 12 years — back to the Champions Cup days.

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Gunther: Can he or can’t he?

“Du willst Per Günther dunken sehen?” (or “Will you/we see Per Günther dunk?”) is a 68-second clip featuring Allan Ray and Pooh Jeter bringing the trash talk and the 185cm (6’1”) point guard’s strong willingness to jam.

Poor Per. And yet there’s a method to the seeming madness of this method. The club has announced that, should the Ratiopharm Ulm Facebook page receive 20,000 fans (could they mean “likes”?), Herr Günther promises to successfully dunk it through. Though perhaps he should recall what happened directly after ol’ Billy Hoyle pulled off the slam in a guaranteed victory…

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History in the making? Ricky “The Human YouTube Highlight Clip” Rubio lived up to BallinEurope’s sobriquet last night in his Minnesota Timberwolves’ 107-83 win over the San Antonio Spurs. Rubio’s 25-point, 13-rebound, 12-assist performance was the first 20+/12/12 triple double against the Spurs since Larry Bird – and totally makes for one sweet YouTube clip in its own right. See for yourself in the nicely tightly-edited two-some minutes from the league below.

(Incidentally, BiE’s said it before and may say it again: How about that Rubio-to-Williams connection, eh?)

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And now the ladies are getting into the act: Below runs the squad of Italy’s Liomatic Umbertide doing the dance craze that’s ubiquitous today, gone tomorrow. Or maybe not. Notable beyond the okay performance by the lionesses: Just check out the “description” field below this YouTube. “Recorded with Harlem Shake Creator HD for iPhone and iPad,” it reads. Good gods, there’s an app now?

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Aaaaand here’s another for the collection. After the Nike International Junior Tournament in Belgrade closed yesterday, two of the tourney’s youth teams added to the phenomenon overtaking European basketball clubs daily, namely the irresistible urge to perform the Harlem Shake. Without further ado, here are the Alba Berlin and INSEP ballers succumbing to the craze.

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Is this officially “viral” yet? A few days ago, BallinEurope stumbled upon and posted an, um, interpretation of the Harlem Shake as presented by the roster of Bundesliga-leading Brose Baskets Bamberg. Days later, FC Bayern Munich’s lot YouTubed their own ‘Shaking…

…and today it seems the phenomenon has spread to Spain’s basketball world as well: Check out Asefa Estudiantes’ Germán Gabriel, Jaime Fernández, Kyle Kuric, Daniel Clark, Edgar Vicedo and Jayson Granger plus a whole gaggle of would-be Harlemites getting down.

Right, then, European basketball squads: Who’s got next?

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The NBA All-Star What Contest? Over in the ‘States, basketball superstars created highlight-reel clips while facing little opposition … so forget canned exhibitions (especially Flight White’s sad showing) and check out a show most missed: Croatian wunderkind Mario Hezonja submitted the dunk of the weekend with an incredible one-handed finish to an alley-oop pass from fellow youth-ball player Joan Creus in FC Barcelona’s 67-66 squeaker of a LEB Gold league victory over Leyma Basquet.

The 17-year-old Hezonja went on to put in a game-high 17 points, most of which were highlight-worthy. See the man-among-boys for yourself below — and remember the name.

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Sadly enough for James White, a fourth dunk contest trophy was not added to his mantelpiece after this weekend NBA All-Star game festivities. In fact, after promising Dwyane Wade (and the general populace) a guaranteed win with something completely different…

…White let down those who believed after seeing him win dunk titles in Russia, Turkey and Italy by not getting out of the second round, going back not only on an earlier gauntlet-throwing while also ignoring a few key steps in the patented James White Method for winning these things as publicized by BallinEurope.

With more than a week to go before the 2013 contest, White proclaimed that “Whatever I do is going to be new. It’s not going to be seen in the NBA dunk contest. You’ve seen it maybe on YouTube, but you haven’t seen it on the NBA stage. You’ve seen windmills…”

And then White went and attempted a windmill. BiE will spare you clips of the repeated misses (easily the worst aspect of the dunk contest) and instead merely post the GIF of White’s last attempt as produced by SB Nation. You’ll get the idea.

In analyzing why White failed in his quest for dunk title no. 4, BiE goes back to the man’s own prescription to see just what went wrong…

Step #1. Start the dunking process from the opposite corner of the basket at which you will dunk. Check, White began his approach waaaaaay back. Several times.
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Damn straight BallinEurope’ll run these videos. Alongside this year’s top-notch hoops for which the Copa Del Rey has become world famous, the 2013 edition of the tournament featured some amazing athleticism, choreography and straight-up gorgeousness from Las Dreamcheers, a dance team made up of ACB cheerleaders.

Check out the Liga Endesa-produced video directly below for highlights from last weekend’s show-within-a-show, including what must be the world’s sexiest stewardess outfits. (Is this a preview of Turkish Airlines’ new employee wardrobes?) Good ol’ YouTube provides another compilation as well…

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