Live chat: CSKA Moscow vs. Olympiacos for 2012 Euroleague championship

Hard to believe it’s open us — this season just flew by, it feels like, but nevertheless the beginning of the end tips off in about 40 minutes. Can Olympiacos win the biggest must-win of all to complete their amazing run? Or will CSKA Moscow, a team of destiny even before signing Andrei Kirilenko, earn the second piece to what’s looking like a unique triple crown year? Chat with us here about the possibilities from now through game’s end right here.

<a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=8ea964c934" >Euroleague Championship game (CSKA Moscow-Olympiacos)</a>

And then Cover It Live blew up, crashed, imploded, etc. As did Twitter and Facebook, probably. Unbelievable. Without hyperbole, simply one of the greatest comebacks in a season and game BiE has ever seen. Maybe 10 minutes of basketball action that summarized Olympiacos’ incredible never-say-die 2011-12 Euroleague season. Words fail me and everyone here. What just happened…? BiE’ll have to sleep on it. If i can, after that.

Just. Incredible.

May 13, 2012ballineurope

Comments: 23

AB
7 years ago
God is Great.
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Apollo
7 years ago
I told you that Spanoulis was the REAL MVP of this season. But this site just didn’t get it and apparently voted for Kirilenko instead.

Like I said, there is a HUGE difference between just putting some stat padding and being one of the guys in an all star team, versus truly leading a team in every way as a leader. On court, off court, locker room, etc.

Anyone that actually watched the games knew Spanoulis was the real MVP. I hope next time that this site will be more careful in how they vote for the MVP award.
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Apollo
7 years ago
With that huge respect to Ivkovic and Printezis. No words need to be said.

And the 3 young Greek players are incredible players at their age.

Mantzaris
Sloukas
Papanikoloau (dominated Kirilenko)

and add to that Pappas who maybe is better than any of them………….

OMG what a future for the Greek National Team. They are going to be SCARY good in a few years.
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Apollo
7 years ago
Oh and.greatest final of all time. Greatest comeback of all time………..

Teodosic, Siskauskas, Krstic, and Kirilenko all choked big time.

It was just something else seeing Teodosic get rolled like that by such young players as Mantzaris and Sloukas, and seeing Kirilenko get completely manhandled by Papanikoloau.

3 players that accoring to Gabe, “are not good enough to play in the NBA, otherwise they would have been drafted already.”

Oh and Gabe and Phileus and Mike, you can shove your “Kirilenko is the best player in Europe” BULL SHIT up your you know whats.

He had to have the refs save him in the semis, and he just got dominated by a 21 year old Greek player in the final. Not to mention his helping in the biggest choke job of any final in basketball HISTORY.

You 3 trolls are a disgrace to this forum and your endless bull shit lies just got proven for what they are – lies.
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- Gabe
  7 years ago
  You are so crazy Apollo. CSKA loses by one point and everyone was “dominated”. Kirilenko was voted the best player in Europe in the regular season and was one point away from the triple crown and he got dominated. So than Diamantidis must really suck because he got “dominated” in the semi-final.
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Apollo
7 years ago
Gabe didn’t watch the game. SHOCK

Does not watch the game but comes in here and pretends to be an expert. Like he does on everything related to European basketball.

Kirilenko played like crap and he was totally embarrassed by Papanikoloau.

Kirilenko’s “Euroleague legacy” is that he will forever be remembered as the biggest choker in Euroleague history, along with Teodosic, Krstic, and Siska.

In your troll mind of an NBA only fan, this means that Kirilenko “was the best player in Europe”.

Just more of the same trolling that you bring here, like “Childress was one of the best players in Europe”, and “Rubio was one of the best point guards in Europe”.

You are just a total black eye against this whole website with your endless trolling.

You talked so much endless trash, did so much trolling, made up so much BS about the “two best players in Europe” (Krstic and Kirilenko)…….none of it was true and it was all trolling.

You do this without having ever even seen a Euroleague game.

Then, after the single most embarrassing performance ever in Euroleague history by these players, you still come here to trash talk.

You are just a guy that comes here to taunt and flame others. There is no other reason that you have ever come here. You are notorious at the FIBA website, and you are notorious here.
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Apollo
7 years ago
Gabe says:
May 14, 2012 at 12.57am

You are so crazy Apollo. CSKA loses by one point and everyone was “dominated”. Kirilenko was voted the best player in Europe in the regular season and was one point away from the triple crown and he got dominated. So than Diamantidis must really suck because he got “dominated” in the semi-final.

CSKA could not win a triple crown genius. They didn’t win the Russian Cup. No team can win the triple crown this year.

I think Olympiacos would have won it. They lost the Greek Cup final by one point to Panathinaikos, and Law didn’t play because he was injured.

The refs also blew a call at the end of the game, and wrongly gave PAO two free throws. I am a PAO fan but I can admit that.

So, I think Olympiacos would have don it, they just had back luck.

I cannot wait for the Greek Finals.

You see Gabe, CSKA in this final four found out what the level of the Greek Championship is. They could not handle it. Kirilenko could not handle it. Krstic could not handle it. Just like Childress could not handle it.

Just like Rubio could not handle it last year.

These players may be good enough for the level of the NBA, but the level of the Greek Championship….playing the big games against PAO and Oly……….they are obviously NOT good enough for that level.

Kirilenko crapped his pants against the Greek teams, just like Childress always did when he had to play against PAO in the big games.

NBA is one thing….playing against the Greek giants is a higher level. These “NBA stars” don’t cut it.
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- Gabe
  7 years ago
  Yeah your Greek “giants” beat a team with one NBA role player, one NBA scrub and a bunch of Euroleague/sucky players. Let’s see how a team of Greek “giants” do against a team with real NBA stars like Team USA or Team Spain but before Greece gets the honors of being smacked down again by those top teams they should worry more about advancing out of the Olympic qualifying event where they have to beat teams more at their level, like Korea, Venezuela and Nigeria.
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Phileus
7 years ago
Today I learned that you can average 2.7 PPG and 0.9 APG in the NBA and still go to the Euroleague to be the Final Four MVP… 😉

Hehehe, I’m just flame-baiting. To be honest, Spanoulis seems like a genuinely good guy and a strong player, but his “fan club” here on this site is just such a revolting little man that it naturally turns away anyone who might otherwise try to appreciate him and learn about him. It will be interesting to see if Greece makes it out of the OQT, and if so, how far they can advance in the Olympics.

All in all, it sounds like it was a fun Final Four. Maybe in future years it will be televised here, too 🙂
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Apollo
7 years ago
The game will be on YouTube shortly if you want to see it.

Also, Spanoulis is better than 95% of the players in the NBA. If you can’t see that and can’t admit it, then you don’t know basketball.
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- Phileus
  7 years ago
  Yes, it seems like it will be a game worth watching!
  
  Well, like I’ve said before, I really think it’s quite difficult to compare players across the leagues from each other until they are actually playing against each other or against the same competition. That’s why I’m looking forward to the Olympics. The whole country will see what he can do against common competition.
  
  I’m not even as interested in the NBA Finals as I am in the Olympics right now.
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Slick Rick
7 years ago
Spanoulis was absolutely outstanding against Team USA in both 2006 and 2008. He can obviously play in NBA. Hell, he made Chris Paul his little you know in 2006 with a total domination over him.

In 2008, they had to double team him and he still did some damage with 14 points and 6 assists. So I think it is pretty safe to say that Spanoulis proved he can easily play against the best NBA players many years ago.

I want to touch on some comments I have been reading in this forum lately. This whole claim that Euroleague is unpopular and no one cares about it, no one follows it, and that no one outside Europe knows a thing about it.

I don’t know where this nonsense is coming from, but the twitter trends clearly disproved that as all untrue and just the imagination of some people.

The top 10 trends worldwide were all Euroleague related. They had over 800,000 followers during the end of the game.

I really would like to know where all this hate against the Euroleague comes from by some people that frequent this blog. The hatred is both illogical and irrational, and the things said about the Euroleague here are really derogatory and completely fabricated.

The Euroleague is extremely popular, as twitter trends today proved. So I think some certain people that like to blog here need to tone their Euroleague bashing rhetoric.

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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- Phileus
  7 years ago
  Well, to be fair I think you’re missing the point of the conversation; it’s not blind hatred against the Euroleague on my part (I just like basketball), but it’s when people claim that the Euroleague is *more popular* than the NBA worldwide when I get confused, because it’s still not true and I don’t see why people try to argue it is.
  
  As we fleshed out earlier, it’s true that Euroleague is becoming more and more popular outside of Europe. This makes sense as the quality of play is high and not everyone is satisfied with the NBA brand these days, even in the US. But I still haven’t seen anyone show me real comparative data that the Euroleague is “more” popular than the NBA in the world generally, regardless of whether you think it’s “better.”
  
  THat’s a discussion for another thread, though. Or hopefully not a discussion at all 😉
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- Gabe
  7 years ago
  I think you forgot to mention Spanoulis’ 11th place finish with Team Greece in the 2010 WC where basically every team they played made him their bitch.
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Slick Rick
7 years ago
Edit:

The Euroleague is extremely popular, as twitter trends today proved. So I think some certain people that like to blog here need to tone down their Euroleague bashing rhetoric.

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Slick Rick
7 years ago
I didn’t see anyone say it was more popular than the NBA. I was mainly referring to some discussions I read where some people said that no one outside of say Greece, Lithuania, Spain knows about the Euroleague or watches it. That’s not true, but even if it was.

Let’s play Devil’s advocate here. I remember just a couple years ago that one of the final four games got something like 22 million TV viewers just in Greece and Spain. NBA Finals games can get that many for the whole planet.

So even if it was just Greece and Spain, which really that notion is just ridiculous, the viewership was still rivaling what NBA Finals had done worldwide. For example, there was an NBA Finals game, that I think the highest was like 32 million viewers worldwide.

Well, the Euroleague Final Four had a 30 million just in Europe alone. The point is, even if it was true that no one outside a few European nations cared about Euroleague, it does not mean the NBA was getting more viewers.

Point being just that, there are some people in this blog that are indeed making up a lot of stuff out of their own thoughts, just to somehow criticize the Euroleague on every topic here. No one needs to know that Euroleague sucks or is inferior, or how one guy said it, “is made up from NCAA rejects”.

But yet, every topic is full of comments like this. Then to say, more TV viewers proves NBA is way better than Euroleague just looks childish, and in truth, really isn’t even true either. I just see it keep being said with things like how Kirilenko is barely a role player in NBA and he is best player like ever in Euroleague and all this stuff.

This is just pure flame baiting, because Kirilenko was a damn good NBA player, and he is never to be compared to Euroleague players like Galis, Petrovic, Djordevic, Danilovic, Belov, etc., etc.

I guess I should not be surprised though. These are the same kinds of basketball fans that talk about Anthony Parker as being GOAT Euroleague player. It’s just sad that morons like that have to be all over this site though.
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- Gabe
  7 years ago
  Congrats to Olympiacos. About Kirilenko he may have been a damn good NBA player but he never made an all-nba team and was an all-star only once, like 8 years ago. He comes to Euroleague and is the Defensive player of the year and the freaking MVP of the league and one missed Printezis jump shot away from being the finals MVP as well.
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- Phileus
  7 years ago
  Hey there Slick Rick,
  
  Thanks for being reasonable, and thanks for trying to use actual numbers and not just insults and assertions. That’s half the difference in these conversations 😉
  
  There is more to say to the topic, including other topics (like China) from other other thread, but I don’t really think it’s the time and place to revive that thread here for the 1,000,000th time, where you should be celebrating Olympiacos/mocking CSKA 😛
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Slick Rick
7 years ago
Oh and,

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Jack Baller
7 years ago
Here you go:

In English:

http://espn.go.com/watchespn/player/_/source/espn3/id/457309

If your cable provider does not offer ESPN, then you can watch it here:

In Greek:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0rRLHD5lqQ
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Filippos
7 years ago
Since 1995 4 team dominate the finals. Cssk, Panathinaikos, Maccabi and Olympiakos.

Greek teams will alway have the upperhand as they are quite motivated to continue, however it is sad that the owners of the two Greek teams seem to consider investing in the sport. That make me sick a a Greek.. the sport Greeks are good in, is not massively supported by the Greek suporters, instead they seem to prefer watching football, where we suck bigtime
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Zoran
7 years ago
http://www.talkbasket.net/6842-british-public-overall-would-go-to-the-final-four.html

British public overall would go to the Final Four

15/05/12 13:45
John Hobbs

The announcement of the Euroleague Final Four coming to London next year was meeted with confused looks on the faces of the media at the pre-Final press conference.

A Spanish journalist in the Sinan Erdem Arena work room shook his head and said that the decision was the “wrong move by the Euroleague”.

The rumour going around was that the Zalgirio Arena in Kaunas was expected to be named as the 2013 venue but when the O2 Arena in London was named instead, the assembled media gathered looked away from their laptops and straight at Euroleague CEO Jordi Bertomeu.

Speaking to various journalists while there, the overall reaction in general was a positive one, with a few against it. But main concerns were costs, as England and in particular London is a very expensive city, would the O2 Arena, a 20,000 seat capacity arena sell-out a Euroleague event? And with the British Basketball League play-off final normally held around the same time as the Final Four weekend, would that effect matters?

“It’s a good venue choice in my opinion, I think though that the price of hotels and restuarant costs will be high which could put people off,” Os Davis of Ball In Europe admitted.

Davis continued: “It’s a great venue though, one of the biggest in Europe and the Euroleague have chosen a great time to host the Final Fours in London with the Olympics and everything. I really hope that Great Britain can make it an event to remember because they need basketball events like this, to boost the popularity of the sport there, if they turn out for it on the back of what could be a solid GB showing at the Olympics, then it will mak people stand up and take notice that basketball isn’t a minority sport.”

French journalist Julien Debort from Reverse Magazine shares the same opinions as Davis does and isn’t thinking of the negatives at all.

“It’s just great to have a Final Four in a unique venue, meaning that it’s in a country where basketball isn’t recognised as a major sport,” he said.

Costs will be an issue, no doubt. England isn’t a cheap country and most fans might be put off with the cost of tickets, food, drink and gifts. Something that will affect the four teams that will contest next year’s Final Four. The O2 Arena should, in theory be a sell-out. It will give the opportunity for the teams contesting the games to be allocated tickets for larger numbers of fans and with 6,000 a regular figure for the British Basketball finals games, neutral numbers buying tickets is a possibility.

The BBL Play-off finals could be tricky, as its home is in Birmingham’s National Indoor Arena. But surely this could be a major promotion opportunity for the BBL to move to London and really get a marketing team involved to work with the Euroleague to stage the final at the O2 and get fans to notice the British Basketball League. To see that there is a league and that it is great to watch.

The one unfortunate negative about the BBL is the promotion it does overall. The BBL Trophy Final was held last year at the O2 during the NBA games and there were no people handing out flyers, and no coverage apart from delayed coverage on the country’s satelite television stations, but in the arena, zero promotion at all of it.

This could be the BBL’s time to right those wrongs.

All that aside though, and choosing London could not of come at a better time. The NBA staged two regular season games in March of last year, the Olympic Basketball tournament is amongst the hottest selling tickets available, so it’s only right that the Euroleague Final Four, the biggest European club basketball event with support and passion that the NBA can not touch should be staged at the O2.

But are the British basketball fraternity interested in trying something that is mainly out of their comfort zone? With the majority choosing the NBA and nothing else, London is tough to crack. Ask anyone on the street if they know the NBA? Chances are they will. Ask them if they have heard of the Euroleague and nine times out of ten they will say no.

“I’m sure some British fans will come to the Euroleague Final Four at the O2,” Greg Tanner, editor of the only British basketball magazine MVP said. “When London sees tens of thousands of fanactical basketball fans turning up, I’m sure it will spark some interest. Real basketball fans here will also get to see a level of ball never usually enjoyed on these shores.”

The reaction of basketball fans in the UK was, like the media in Istanbul a positive one. Former BBL referee Mark Ennis said it was ‘superb news’ while well known Great Britain Basketball MC Simon Hosannah voiced exactly the same opinion.

Some basketball fans though are thinking of going and if they do they will go for one thing.

“I’d go purely for the atmosphere. That would be the only real reason to watch for me,” said a basketball fan from Worthing.

“I’d maybe go, but it would be for the atmosphere,” said a Chichester University student.

While there is no doubt that the 2013 Final Four will be highly anticipated, prehaps more than ever as the Euroleague enters England for the first time since the days of the London Towers in 2001, personal opinion is that promotion will be key, as the Euroleague will be stepping foot in what you could say is “unknown territory”.

Basketball in the UK has changed since those days of 11 years ago, unfortunately for the worse, but it’s getting back into the swing of things slowly but surely.

The NBA set them up, the Olympics will knock the majority of pins down, no doubt. Can the Euroleague strike down the remaining few and win the British audience over?

Then there is the small matter of where to stage the Nike International Junior Tournament?
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Aleksandar Zoran
7 years ago
SO TWITTER IS A RELIABLE SOURCE NOW?
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