FIBA 354
Posterization of the week: Luigi Datome crushes Semih Erden
With little basketball going on outside of the FIBA EuroBasket qualifiers – and the WNBA providing so few posterizations – BallinEurope’s informal “highlight clip of the week” competition wasn’t even close. Check out Luigi Datome jamming one for Team Italy that got the home crowd to their feet and sent Turkey’s former Boston Celtic. Behind […]
Team Armenia’s Gor Plavchyan to play for Glendale College
A bit of news from the fledgling basketball program of Armenia – the federation there is looking to FIBA Europe Division C play in 2014 – was recently passed to BiE … Somewhat belated congratulations go out to 18-year-old PF Gor Plavchyan, who’ll be playing ball with Glendale College for the 2012-13 season. Plavchyan’s CV […]
Montenegro 73, Serbia 71: A star is born as Ivanovic hits buzzer-beater three
How do you quiet one of those notoriously airplane-loud crowds in Belgrade? Eighteen-year-old Nikola Ivanovic, showing poise beyond his years, had the answer to that riddle on Saturday in Team Montenegro’s Eurobasket 2013 qualifying round game against Serbia. To cap the stunning upset victory, Ivanovic calmly launched a near-halfcourt three, struck gold and instantly utterly […]
Epic win by Team USA begets epic Facebook fail
Oops … this is the problem with social media, eh? Shortly after the US’ 107-100 win over Spain for the gold medal in 2012 Olympic basketball, the folks running the FIBA Facebook page uploaded the below image and caption (see below the break), inducing nearly 300 comments along the line of “FAIL” within a half-hour. […]
2012 Olympic basketball: Rising and falling stock after the first round
While we’re a little ways away from actually awarding medals for 2012 Olympic basketball, the first round showed international hoops fans quite a lot. Though the fat lady hasn’t sung yet, reputations have changed over the past five games to cause some individual and/or teams losses beyond these Olympics. BallinEurope today takes a look at […]
2012 Olympics: Is Spanish dominance over? (Plus Official Fearless Predictions™)
BallinEurope may be pulling the trigger a bit early on this one, but has to ask: Was the loss to Russia on Saturday a harbinger of things to come from Team Spain? Not to put too fine a point on it, but is the marathon (by today’s standards) golden age of Spanish basketball in international […]
BallinEurope’s Official Fearless Predictions™: 2012 Olympic Basketball Group A
Okay, with just a few hours before men’s basketball tips off at the 2012 Olympics, BallinEurope’s got just enough time for some Official Fearless Predictions™. If done properly, these things are never as easy as they look. Right, starting with Group A, then, we’ve got: 1. USA (5-0) also 5. Nigeria (1-4) 6. Tunisia (0-5). […]
Twenty years ago today: The Road to Barcelona
All right, so it wasn’t exactly twenty years ago today per se, but the current Argentina-Spain-US tournament playing these days brought to mind some of the warmup games in 1992 – at that time, all the Dream Teams kept us enthralled as we imagined the upcoming clashes in Barcelona. So today another chapter in BallinEurope’s […]
In Spain game, Gelabale gets monster block, ejection, possible suspension
Quel dommage! Eurobasket 2011 runners-up France are finding the road to London bumpy indeed recently. Already losing Joakim Noah throughout the 2012 Olympic Games due to injury, Les Bleus must temporarily sit Boris Diaw and Nando de Colo due to NBA-related insurance issues. And now Mickael Gelabale faces penalties from FIBA, including possible suspension for […]
Now officially Spurs, Diaw and De Colo to sit against Team Spain
You’d think that boasting six NBA players on an Olympic squad would automatically count as a positive against a tough 2012 Games field – but today Team France discovers the down side of running with US-based players. France-based Basket Actu and San Antonio Spurs blog Air Alamo are reporting this morning that, since Boris Diaw […]
Highlights: 90 seconds from the Olympic qualifiers
Here’s a quickie for you, then: Approximately 90 seconds’ worth of official highlight clip from the 2012 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament, starring Bo McCalebb, Vassilis Spanoulis, Ike Diogu and a whole bunch of others…
Upset in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament today: What are the chances?
Right, so BallinEurope has already publicly logged Official Fearless Predictions™ for the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament knockout stage in bracket format. Europe’s four representatives – group winners all – take on some decent African and North American competition, but nevertheless the bookies like an all-Europe final four in Venezuela. Indeed, there’s a high probability that […]