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List of 2010-11 European Basketball Champions
With most leagues drawing to a close and playoffs beginning – not to mention champions already crowned in Albania, Cyprus, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Norway and a few regional leagues – BallinEurope returns its “List of European Basketball Champions.” At present, only the above-listed domestic leagues have shut down for the summer; BiE supplies information on […]
Video clips: Unics Kazan wins, Real Madrid loses, and YouTube shows how not to dunk
While much of the basketball-loving world was distracted by the squall of opening-round NBA playoff games, the roundball game nevertheless played on in leagues throughout Europe and beyond. Of course, this lead-in mainly serves as an excuse to justify running the below handful of highlights, links and pithy bon mots to (help you waste some […]
Eurocup Championship: Unics Kazan master plan coming to fruition
Better late than never, as the old expression goes; and in the case of Unics Kazan’s 2010-11 season, continuing to achieve late could prove much better in the medium- and long-term future. Few teams so actively rebuilt and retooled with purpose last offseason as Unics Kazan, bringing aboard Slavko Vranes out of Partizan Belgrade, 2009-10 […]
BallinEurope’s completely relativistic 2010-11 All-Star Team (or, What? You’ve never heard of Bambale Osby?)
With most domestic basketball hitting a halfway point and the Euroleague into its second round, BallinEurope today pays tribute to some outstanding individual performances by naming its all-star team. No relative merits or penalties were assessed for the league in which BiE’s all-stars compete, and domination in one league was a top criteria for making […]
Official BallinEurope Power Rankings: Pre-knockouts edition
Now that noted astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has announced God’s non-existence in our universe through mathematics, maybe he can start working on explaining the FIBA tie-breaking procedure. No, no, don’t start on BiE; it’s as easy as dialing up Wikipedia to find the steps in determining seeding for tournament play: Placement is determined based on, in […]
Vrankovic names preliminary Team Croatia roster; includes 11 Euroleaguers, just six from Eurobasket
How do you say, “Let’s clean house!” in Croatian? Because that’s the phrase Team Croatia coach Josip Vrankovic was certainly employing when he assembled his 17-man preliminary FIBA World Championship. After the disappointing finish by the Croats in the 2009 Eurobasket competition, then-head coach Jasmin Repesa hastily resigned and thereafter replaced by Vrankovic; now Vrankovic […]
Youth competitions and beyond: The state of European national basketball programs
On the eve of Eurobasket 2009, Ball in Europe’s man in Italy, Francesco Cappelletti, looks back at this summer’s youth competitions to assess where Europe’s national programs stand and where they’re headed. From where will the future be launched? Read on! One day until Eurobasket 2009: It has been a full summer which started with […]
Eurobasket 2009 preview capsules, part one
While counting down the days ’til Eurobasket 2009 tips off, BallinEurope.com will take a brief look at the field of 16 teams in brief. Enough said — onto today’s capsules! Bulgaria Group: D In brief: The word is “plucky.” With Team Bulgaria’s one bonafide superstar, Ibrahim Jaaber, out, all the pluck in the world won’t […]
Croatia-Macedonia meet in World Cup final, Eurobasket preview
The dust has mostly settled in Ankara, with Croatia and Macedonia the final two terms standing. Though Croatia should prevail in this one and the “World Cup of Basketball” isn’t really much more than a lot of friendly matches bound together loosely and packaged as a tournament, the game tonight could prove to be crucial […]
Euroleague: Zalgiris Kaunas, Lithuania
What would we do without Jonas? Without Jonas, we would not have been able to give our shirt of our EuroGuy vs. Ramunas Siskauskas (see the logo) to Ramunas himself at the Final Four in Madrid this past summer. Jonas has always been a true friend to BallinEurope and has sent in many reports and […]
The Russian league explained
Since 2006, when CSKA brought the Euroleague title back to Moscow after 35 years, all eyes are trained on Russian basketball and its new economic power. By the way, no single Roman Abramovich heads a club, but the great boom of the entire movement (which includes the National Team, European champion in pectore) […]
After the Olympics: What's the future of Croatia?
Today, I am going to talk about the youngest European participant in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Croatian national team featured nine players born in 1982 or younger, something that no other team could offer. Let’s check how the next tournaments could look like for Jasmin Repesa’s guys.