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The offical BiE NBA 2009-10 European All-Star Team
As one of the popular highlights of the NBA season, everything about the annual All-Star Game is loaded with pomp, hype and (hopefully) fun. No exception was that moment many a basketball fan awaits with gusto and prepares to heartily attack in argument as the naming of the rosters for the teams that will be […]
Europe's top national teams of the 2000s
After taking a look at the European players of the decade and top professional teams of the decade, BallinEurope today turns attention to the national level. Which teams from the 2000s will we still recall fondly in years to come? Below are listed eight key national squads from the passing ten-year span, the unforgettable basketball […]
The Innocents Abroad, Part one: Assessing Europe's NBA rookies and sophs
With the NBA regular season nearly one-quarter finished (yeesh, when did that happen?), Ball in Europe takes a look at the league’s freshmen and sophomores from The Continent. The NBA currently lists over 80 international players on its rosters, with exactly 50 coming from European quarters. About one-fifth of those are recent enough entries to […]
Betting on basketball: MVP, tops in points, rebounds, assists
Tomorrow is the day: Eurobasket 2009 finally tips off. Naturally, Euroleague/Ball in Europe sponsor SportingBet.com has a plethora of odds and lines for your amusement, including some intriguing fodder for discussion in the form of individual-awards proposition bets. So you think you know not only who’s going to stand atop the podium when it’s over, […]
Media source claims source says media report on Ricky Rubio wrong
From ESPN.com comes a story of reportage on reportage about reportage on the Ricky Rubio-to-Barcelona story. (So if you include Ball in Europe in on the mix, you’ve got four degrees of separation from the real story whatever that may be. But what the hell, that’s life in the 21st century.) While Spanish-language outlet Marca.com […]
Best of the (basketball) net: Calm Before The Perfect Storm edition
The pickings for basketball-related news online this week were a tad slim, with that inevitable last-weeks-of-August malaise that conquers Europe annually and sends the entire continent on holiday really settling in. Ah well, Eurobasket 2009 tips off in a couple weeks, followed by national leagues awakening, and Euroleague/NBA isn’t that far off, really. In the […]
Team Spain unleashed … i mean, presented
No matter how the whole Minnesota Timberwolves/DKV Joventut thing works out, the 2009-10 international basketball season will be, to some extent, The Year of Ricky Rubio. Rubio was yesterday officially presented with the FIBA Europe award for 2008 Young Men’s Player of the Year by FIBA Europe secretary-general Nar Zanolin. Aside from bestowing Rubio with […]
Adriana Lima enjoys Serbian cuisine (and other important news from Serbia)
This weekend, Darko Milicic married his pregnant girlfriend Zorana Markus in Saborna crkva of Saint Nikola in Sremski Karlovci (sic!) and the after-marriage party in Novi Sad was *the* place to be for the Serbian basketball elite.
Pau Gasol's Fave 5
NBA Playoff time! Which means I am turning on my (OK, OK, Michelle, it’s not mine) Slingbox to watch some NBA action. Just no – the Lakers are playing the Jazz and up to this point are really killing them. During halftime, Pau Gasol was asked about his five favorite international players. He wanted to […]
After the Olympics: What's the future of Spain?
The Spanish national team is the most successful European team of recent years. The silver medal at the Olympics only confirmed this trend. Besides the coaching question that reigns at the moment, I will today look at the future in terms of player material.
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.
Thanks to Spain and USA for a great basketball game
So the Redeem Team won the gold medal in Beijing. What in the end looked like no surprise must actually be considered a deserved win by the best team of the tournament: Nothing more and nothing less. The final game showed that the gap between the USA and the rest of the world is not […]