Portland Trail Blazers 68
NBA stars playing in Europe: What are the odds…?
First, BallinEurope would like to a couple more American players to The Continent, as Milwaukee Bucks second-round draft pick Jon Leuer has signed with the Bundesliga’s Frankfurt Skyliners to play during the NBA lockout and undrafted Colorado State University forward Andy Ogide has joined the ranks of LEB club Breogán. But as the BiE schadenfreudometer […]
Parker, Noah, Diot lead big names filling France’s Eurobasket 2011 squad
Twelve players and four backups have been selected to represent France at the upcoming Eurobasket 2011 tournament; gut reaction says that Les Bleus would appear to be one of the favorites to emerge out of Group B in pool play. The group competition will include Germany, Israel, Italy, Latvia and Serbia. The 12-man roster is […]
Has it really been 18 years? Remembering Drazen Petrovic
An entire generation has entered basketball since his untimely passing and while ever-growing numbers of NBA and European stars who have never seen him play emerge, all owe a debt to Dražen Petrović. It was on this day in 1993 that the only man who realistically could have held claim to the sobriquet of “the […]
NBA Western Conference Playoffs: The Eurocentric view
Rumor has it that across the ocean, this basketball league called the NBA is about to begin its playoffs. With the 2010-11 regular season behind us, BallinEurope takes a present-and-future look at the playoff-bound Europeans in the American league series by series, together with musings, meanderings, YouTube clips and those Fearless Predictions™. Today: the Western […]
USA 92, World 80 at Nike Hoop Summit; Rivers, Biyombo star
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much for European hoops fans to cheer about at the 2011 Nike Hoop Summit (BallinEurope can’t believe he got up at 4am for the near-drubbing), though the world has now been formally introduced to Anthony “Son of Doc” Rivers and Bismack Biyombo. Team USA won 92-80, though this score belies the fact […]
Arvydas Sabonis: A career retrospective, via YouTube
BallinEurope sends out huge, 7’3” congratulations this morning to all-time great Arvydas Sabonis, finally inducted into the Professional Basketball Hall of Fame alongside luminaries such as Chris Mullin, Dennis Rodman (whoa, that’s still weird), Artis Gilmore, Tex Winter, “Goose” Tatum, Tom “Satch” Sanders, Tara Van Derveer, Herb Magee, and Teresa Edwards. A tribute in the […]
Sabonis on expansion into Europe: “It depends on the NBA”
Lithuanian legend Arvydas Sabonis recently gave a brief interview to Erildis Budraitis of Balsas.lt – later picked up by the official website of Žalgiris Kaunas – in which the big man reminisces about life in the NBA and speculates on the presently American league’s future a bit. A few interpreted excerpts follow. Balsas: Do you […]
Juan Dixon comeback begins today with Banvit
Thanks to an injury suffered by Antonio Graves, Turkish side Banvit had been left with a hole in the depth chart at the no. 2 spot plus a free “foreign-born player” spot on the roster – an unfortunate situation for the team, but ultimately a serendipitous chance for Juan Dixon to return to professional basketball […]
“Too old” Ilgauskas to retire after 2010-11; will not play for Team Lithuania in Eurobasket
Lithuania-based news outlet/high-profile club sponsor Lietuvos Rytas yesterday published quite an extensive piece on Zydrunas Ilgauskas and his recent lack of playing time with the NBA’s most woeful Miami Heat. Big Z took his talents to South Beach for the veterans’ minimum salary of $1.4 million this year reportedly at the behest/encouragement of LeBron James, […]
BiE's Top 10 most popular stories of 2010
Yeah, we’re gonna do the “Top 10” retrospective thing, but trust BiE: It’ll be mostly painless. (After all, a little reviewing of crazy highlights never hurt anyone – even with a hangover.) These are the stories running on BallinEurope in calendar year 2010 that got the most “reads,” but how many do you remember? Relive […]
Oregonians, did you vote Sabonis?
While Election Day went on throughout America, the city of Portland was treated to a nice shadow campaign, propagated by individual(s) unknown. Riffing on former Trail Blazer Chris Dudley’s campaign for governor of Oregon, some basketball aficionados in the state crafted a bit of a samizdat poster for Lithuanian citizen Arvydas Sabonis to rule govern […]
Fernandez a Blazer through 2012 (yeah, surrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre)
Despite the guard’s well-known recalcitrance to continuing with the Portland Trail Blazers, the team has officially picked up a fourth-year option on Rudy Fernandez’ contract thereby theoretically keeping the Spaniard on the Blazer payroll through 2011-12. Trail Blazers GM Rich Cho stated that “there was never a question the Blazers would pick up th eoption […]