Team Spain 199
Rumor: Timberwolves pursue Team Spain connection with Derrick Williams for Pau proposal
Could Pau Gasol be reunited with his Spain teammate Ricky Rubio on the Minnesota Timberwolves? According to Hoops World, Minny management is pursuing such a situation and is reportedly willing to send over rookie Derrick Williams and draft choices to the Los Angeles Lakers for Pau. No comment seems to have been made by Lakers […]
Happy Valentine’s Day from BallinEurope (also Pau Gasol and Ricky Rubio)
BallinEurope wishes readers a happy Valentine’s Day today with an expression from that greatest love of all, namely the love of a fan for basketball. At left is our Valentine’s Day card to you, starring those “Latin lover” types Pau Gasol and Ricky Rubio – a match made in heaven. Or in Spain. (A suitable-for-printing-and-framing […]
Serge Ibaka serves notice to Dallas Mavericks, NBA with 10 blocks
Team Spain’s controversial Eurobasket addition truly teed off the Dallas Mavericks last night on the other side of the pond. Serge Ibaka contributed an awesome double-double (okay, so the 2-of-8 shooting wasn’t so impressive, but still) of 11 rebounds and 10 points in the Western Conference-leading Oklahoma City Thunder’s 95-86 win over the defending NBA […]
Ricky Rubio to Kobe Bryant: “You know you’re getting the silver medal, right?”
Perhaps the most unfairly overlooked aspect in discussions of the difficulties European players face when attempting to adapt to NBA ball is the question of language. Sure, English is the international language of basketball. Sure, there are nearly three times as many English-language students than native speakers. Sure, a great fraction of Europeans grow up […]
Posters absoluts & Monsterdunken: The Eurocentric slam dunk of 2011 – plus 25 others
Before BallinEurope signs off for 2011, let’s give a late Christmas gift to the dunkaholics out there, shall we? Below runs a collection compiled through the year featuring dunks by Europeans, on Europeans or perhaps simply in Continental games. The first 20 will listed by competition, followed the top five runners-up and the champion jam […]
The Eurocentric 2011-12 NBA Western Conference preview (plus Official Fearless Predictions™)
Okay, after that Xmas distraction, BallinEurope is ready to write up some more stuff about good tidings and cheer*, namely, the start of the NBA season. With hours to go, BiE’s got just enough time to get in the part two of the Euro-centric big-league preview in this brief look at the teams in the […]
The official BallinEurope ballot for FIBA Europe Men's Players of the Year: Nowitzki, Navarro and…?
BallinEurope just loves season- and year-ending polls, and every December FIBA Europe offers hoops devotees the opportunity to participate in the naming the Continent’s Players of The Year. And while the winner of the award for 2011 – a.k.a. the Year of Dirk – is surely a no-brainer, the FIBA ballot calls for electors to […]
NBA Nuclear Winter settling in; Twitter bursts with news of player exodus
You know who benefits from the NBA player lockout? Twitter, that’s who. The website has become an endless source of interest as each event/non-event transpires in the NBA lockout soap opera. Minute to minute, commentators, players, pundits and rumormongers pithily weigh in and/or report on the immediate future of professional basketball in America… …and Europe! […]
The Gallinari Dilemma: So good you don’t want to get addicted
Sportswriter Enrico Cellini joins the BallinEurope team officially today with his thoughts on the tricky difficulties Emporio Armani Milano and its mastermind Sergio Scariolo may be facing in assimilating quite probably the top player in Italian professional basketball, Danilo Gallinari. Coach Sergio Scariolo recently won a European championship with the Spanish national team. He then […]
Serge Ibaka “wants to play at least a month or two” in Spain
Already the rare naturalized player on Team Spain, Serge Ibaka would reportedly like to extend his commitment to his adopted home country. Hoops Hype today is posting quotes from an unnamed source vis-à-vis the possibility of the Oklahoma City Thunderer joining an ACB team while the NBA lockout drags on. “He wants to play at […]
ACB preseason: Unicaja Malaga, Lucentum Alicante, Caja Laboral take cups; Gran Canaria bows out in Germany
The 2011-12 ACB season may not have tipped off yet, but the Spanish league’s teams were nevertheless busy in preseason games this weekend. Below, BallinEurope briefly rounds up the action. • A bunch of regional tournaments went down this weekend in Spain, including the Lliga Catalana semifinials. In this tourney yesterday, reigning Lliga and ACB […]
Spain 98, France 85: Behind Pau Gasol, Navarro, Ibaka, Spain makes it back-to-back titles
Big congratulations this morning go out from BallinEurope to Team Spain, which defended its European title in besting France in the 2011 FIBA EuroBasket championship game, 98-85. Particularly brilliant in this final match was Serge Ibaka, who provided five blocks and smothering defense off the bench. Five Spaniards scored in double figures, with tournament MVP […]