For the first time ever, the NBA/FIBA collaboration known as Basketball Without Borders heads to Russia. This month, some 50 European youth basketball players will get schooled – that is to say, be educated by – quite the roster of international talent.
Headling the program are Team Russia’s own Andrei Kirilenko, Alexey Shved (Minnesota Timberwolves) and Timofey Mozgov (Denver Nuggets); this troika will be joined by the likes of retired legends Sarunas Marciulionis and Alexander Volkov as well as Americans Danny Green (San Antonio Spurs, briefly of Union Olimpija), MarShon Brooks (Brooklyn Nets) and Brian Cardinal (Dallas Mavericks). Not too shabby a roster there, particularly if you could time-travel Marciulionis and Volkov back a couple of decades.
And … unfortunately little further information seems to exist out there – including the participants – other than the program’s mission statment of “global basketball development program that uses the sport to create positive social change in the areas of education and health and wellness” and the numbers of staging 30 camps in 15 countries since 2001.
Basketball Without Borders Russia starts this coming Thursday, September 13.
Tags: Alexander Volkov, Alexey Shved, Andrei Kirilenko, Basketball Without Borders, Brian Cardinal, Brooklyn Nets, Dallas Mavericks, Danny Green, Denver Nuggets, FIBA, Marshon Brooks, Minnesota Timberwolves, NBA, Russia, San Antonio Spurs, Sarunas Marciulionis, Team Russia, Timofey Mozgov, Union Olimpija
Fenerbahce Ulker president Aziz Yıldırım was a guest at a football show on Turkish television NTVspor and he made shocking statements about Euroleague referees. Yıldırım said: ” Every referee that comes to Turkey to officiate a Euroleague game goes straight to Grand Bazaar. They buy expensive clothes, gifts and we pay for them. It’s like a tradition for euroleague referees because all other clubs did it in the past. I dare anyone-he’s talking about other Turkish clubs- to claim that they never did it. I can easily prove that each club has done that but it’s not for match fixing. In fact, Turkish Basketball Federation organizes this. They came here, we buy presents and sometimes lose the game. ”
Aziz Yıldırım was on national television to talk about match fixing scandals in Turkey for the first time after he spent almost a year in prison.