Welcome to another edition of “Best of the (basketball) net,” i.e. how to kill another week’s worth of office time on the internet. Please enjoy the following stories — a real international mix this week — complements of BallinEurope.com.
Huge in Turkey
Israel’s Nimrod Tishman is coming to University of Florida. In another Israel basketball-related piece, the Sacramento Bee has the story of whatever happened to the professional career of Team Israel’s Amit “Soft and Chunky” Tamir. In case you were wondering.
The just-created BallinEurope.com Weirdest Post of the Week award this week goes to a story entitled “Turkish Airlines wants Hidayet Türkoğlu” over at a site called OpEdNews.com. The stream-of-consciousness work speculates that Turkish Airlines will be hiring Turkoglu as a pitchman for special Turkey-to-Toronto routes.
From here, we learn that Turkoglu’s heroes “are some advertisers and broadcasters, too”; that “The White Shadow” was extremely popular in Turkey and help foster the country’s current love for the NBA; and something about basketball’s “alternative audience.”
Beyond the fanciful prose, however, there is a question of source. Has anyone heard about Turkoglu signing with Turkish Airlines? I can’t find a damn thing, but my Turkish is pretty rusty, which is to say non-existent…
In the ‘States, “eight college men” managed to pull off a fantastic double PR coup this weekend, earning the attention of both the Chicago Daily Herald and ESPN’s Sports Guy simply by … being loyal and boisterous basketball fans. Read these guys’ stories and try not to LOL – we dare ya.
From China comes the morbidly ironic story of cheating in that country’s “Dream League,” an association of basketball teams that limits players’ height to 1.88 meters. Who needs life-threatening performance enhancers when you can just bow your shoulders and bend your neck back to gain that vital edge?
From the Bloody Grievances Department are rants by Sasha Vujacic and Hamed Haddadi posted this week.
Sasha-of-the-Lakers tells a sordid tale of what appears to be a purely political move by Team Slovenia coaches and trainers to keep Vujacic off the team. The greater problem, it seems, is that Slovenia recklessly gambled with Vujacic’ physical well-being when team doctors inadequately addressed a reported knee injury. The announcement from head coach Jure Zdovc et al that Vujacic would not be participating with Slovenia in Eurobasket 2009 always seemed to be belying something. Political machinations and abrupt cutting aside, if half of what Vujacic claims is true, well, let’s just say that an early American reaction would be to ring up some attorneys…
Finally Team Iran’s Hamed Haddadi really let the Memphis Grizzlies have it, claiming the Grizz folks don’t trust his abilities and that he’s needlessly riding the bench.
Stated Haddadi emphatically to Iranian source Mehr News: “I want to play regularly for the Grizzlies; nevertheless, I will have to change my team now since I am a star of the team but sitting on the bench.”
Finally, DeadSpin.com tells of “Alex” in the article “The Confessions of an NBA Scorekeeper.” Warning: potentially depressing material contained within.
