FIBA 348
From BiE to Team Spain: ¡Felicidades!
If this were America, i’d be searching for hyperbole right now, calling the 2009 edition of Team Spain the greatest Spanish team ever, the greatest European team since dissolution of the Soviet Union, the greatest non-USA squad ever assembled … but instead, BallInEurope humbly offers congratulations to the fantastic Spaniards for finally achieving Eurobasket gold. […]
Eurobasket 2009 championship: Serbia can win if…
“Let’s be realistic. Spain is a great team” – Nikolas Zisis, Greece That’s the lead quote over at the Eurobasket 2009 official site, and it’s good enough to lead here at BallinEurope.com as well on the morning of the final game. Firstly, congratulations to Spain and Serbia for getting into the final game after a […]
Who's ready for EuroBasket 2011?
While the teams for the Eurobasket 2009 final had yet to be determined on Saturday, the first official step on the road to Eurobasket 2011 was taken with the introduction of the logo (though BallinEurope still much prefers the green-and-gold losing bid) and venues for the next biennial tournament. Members of the press were given […]
Eurobasket 2009, lucky day 13
This tournament just keeps getting better and better. Whether you dig the comeback or prefer a back-and-forth tug of war, Eurobasket 2009 had basketball lovers all smiles yesterday with a pair of fantastic contests truly reflecting the excellence of this field. And today there’s *four* more games? Nice. Jumping right in, then…
Eurobasket 2009, day 12: Quickie thoughts, congratulations, predictions
Whoa, a bit too much Pau Gasol for Team France last night, eh? Now that was the Spain everybody’s been wanting to see, if only as an object to hate on. And congratulations to Serbia as well, for just playing a wonderful game in basically brushing aside Russia; i’ve not been so happy being wrong […]
France over Spain, damn right! (or, Eurobasket 2009 fearless predictions for day 11)
With all due respect to Turkey and Slovenia, two teams which have often gotten the short of the stick in the BiE fearless prediction series in Eurobasket 2009, what fun is making picks if you don’t mix in some upsets? And taking France to win the tournament right now is quite the stretch, for two […]
Betting on basketball: Riffing on reassessed Eurobasket outright winner odds
We’re down to the final eight in Eurobasket 2009 and so now might be a good time to, um, reassess those investments made at the beginning of the tournament – which is to say, start covering on some still-shaky (or straight-up *gone*) wagers made before the tourney tipped off…
FIBA suspends, fines Kaspars Kambala
FIBA officials have announced the levying of a four-game suspension from international play on Team Latvia’s Kaspars Kambala for an incident after last week’s Germany-Latvia game. No details on the incident were provided, but wire reports have it that Kambala “reportedly elbowed [Steffen] Hamann in the face, knocking out a tooth” after the game. Kambala […]
Hack-an-Asik and other fearless predictions for Eurobasket 2009, day 10
How do you explain “they should swallow their whistles” to someone who knows nothing about sports? (And I mean really nothing; we’re talking live-six-years-in-Chicago-during-the-Jordan-Era-and-still-not-know-the-difference-between-Bulls-and-Bears nothing.) That was my situation during large portions of the second and third quarters of the France-Greece game last night as to the wife’s chagrin I yelled at the TV. While […]
Normalcy returns to Eurobasket 2009 (?); plus not-so-fearless predictions
All right, so normalcy has apparently returned to normal in Eurobasket 2009, with favorites going three-for-three and BallinEurope’s ratio of correct-to-incorrect fearless predictions brought down to a more realistic level. As It Should Be Then: Turkey rolled on but got a good overtime fight from Serbia (they’ll both be in final eight), while Poland’s dream […]
Eurobasket 2009 fearless predictions VIII: Titanic vs. Hindenburg headline matchup
If you had told a basketball fan about today’s Spain-Lithuania Eurobasket second-round matchup two weeks, he/she might have figured it to be one of the tournament’s most interesting games. It still is, of course, but for the exact opposite reason one may have expected. In one corner is Team Spain, a bunch of household names […]
Fearless predictions for Eurobasket 2009 day seven
After the dust settled from a scintillating trio of Eurobasket 2009 games played yesterday, two questions remained: 1) Should we now pencil Turkey in for the finals or merely the final four? And 2) which is the bigger train wreck right now, Spain or Lithuania? Today’s slate of games looks to be a fairly predictable […]