Theo Papaloukas 46
Introducing the 2010-11 BallinEurope Festivus Invitational Tournament
As a holiday present to the audience, each of you has received courtside tickets to the first annual BallinEurope Festivus Invitational Tournament. Thanks to the miracle of totally BiE-unaffiliated (and totally mind-blowingly awesome) website What If Sports, we can bring together great players of the past and present for true dream matchups – and without […]
Euroleague week three talking points (part I)
Seven Euroleague games go off tonight as the season rounds into form a bit. The marquee match tonight has got to be the Khimki-Baskonia showdown to establish early supremacy in that tough Group A; Olympiacos-Unicaja will surely be worth the viewing as well, although the way the Reds have dominated on their home floor lately […]
Foreign players, strikebreakers take floor in Greece in “parody” of basketball
Those who think an NBA lockout in 2010-11 could be crazy should check out the situation in Greek pro basketball right now. After seeing the first week of action cancelled due to a player strike called by Greece’s player union PSAK, EΣAKE got underway last night as some of the bigger *teams* broke picket lines […]
Frank answers to four burning Euroleague questions
He’s back! Emerging out of hiding (or perhaps digging himself out of work with youth squads plus Italian-language sports media) is BallinEurope’s man in Italy, Francesco Cappelletti. As the season progresses, Cappelletti will be opining as to what really went down in a week’s worth of Euroleague matches. Today, four key themes that will be […]
BallinEurope’s 2010 FIBA World Championship power rankings 3.1
While nearly everybody (perhaps too many, in BiE’s opinion) await the final shape of Team USA’s roster going into the 2010 FIBA World Championship, a bunch of other teams spent the weekend making statements. Said statements could take the shape of confirmation of awesomeness (Spain), reminders of “hey, we still exist” (Brazil), and red-alert level […]
Power ratings: 2010 FIBA World Championship
August is here and it’s full speed ahead for the 2010 FIBA World Championship in Turkey later this month. In coming weeks, we’ll be seeing the national teams competing in the tournament playing warmup games all over the planet – indeed, some have already begun play. With the last few big names having declared “yea” […]
2010 FIBA World Championship odds: Looking for a dark horse {advertorial}
So call BallinEurope kooky: While everyone else with an eye on basketball – even European basketball, for Arvydas Sabonis’ sake – is concentrating on the NBA free-agent market, BiE is all attention on the 2010 FIBA World Championship for Men tipping off in Turkey in August. Naturally, bookmakers too are into it and the early […]
The BallinEurope Sunday playoff quadruple-header (plus Fearless Predictions)
All right, on this last World Cup-free weekend for the foreseeable future, who’s up for a little basketball? No, make that a lot of basketball. A barrage of basketball, if you will. Get ready to clear the schedule, stock up the liquid refreshment and blow off the familial obligations for the hoops marathon we like […]
Panathinaikos destroys Olympiacos, 73-54: Going to YouTube for answers
More than a shocker and well into slap-in-the-face territory was game one of the EΣAKE championship series, where hometown Panathinaikos took care of all business in dispatching Olympiacos, 73-54. Though BallinEurope did not see the match and knows empirically that games should never be judged on the stat line, one number still stands out like […]
Euroleague championship trivia
From the Le Sais-Tu Department comes a few interesting news bites on this evening’s Euroleague Championship participants. Read on, triviamongers!
“We are here to work”: Opening up the post-Euroleague semifinal quotebook
Since last night’s games ended, it’s been a blur of press conferences and meetings for us here in the press section at the Euroleague Final Four … so here’s another round of wit ‘n’ wisdom from the men guiding and playing the games. On winning “Yesterday, we played beyond our limits. My players gave everything. […]
Euroleague Final Four history by the numbers
Attention, all statistics addicts! With the time to tipoff running down steadily, BallinEurope this morning puts things into a little numerical perspective. Which players, coaches and teams will forever be immortalized in the record books when all is said and done at the 2010 Euroleague Final Four? Some measuring sticks for would-be heroes are listed […]