Euro Exchange: 3

Europeans are different – from the way they like basketball to the way
the celebrate Christmas. As some may know Europeans exchange their
presents on the evening of the 24th while in the United States this is
done in the morning of the 25th. I know we are very weird – Europeans
I mean. But still the NBA chooses Europeans players as regular season
MVP’s or even NBA Finals MVP’s.

As a Xmas present to myself I went to Rome, Italy last night to watch
the game of Lottomatica Roma vs. Real Madrid. Real Madrid lost the
game and Lottomatica pulled away with another “W” after winning
against Panathinaikos Athens last week.

Real Madrid’s American Louis Bullock (college: Michigan) took the last
three pointer in the game to send it to over time – but he failed.
Just to come up with some more information about Louis Bullock I went
to youtube and must say that Louis must make some serious money here
in Europe – looking at his car.

Sometimes I am surprised what kind of information is worth a news. But
to mention a surprise meeting between Serbian Basketball club FMP and
Vlade Divac in a plane shows also
the importance that Vlade has in Serbia.

The Russian giant Gazprom is actually planning to build a European Hockey league to
compete the NHL. Is something similar also possible one day in
basketball? Who knows?

Marcus Slaughter explains his view about being cut by Hapoel
Jerusalem. As reported, he has been with an escort lady during the trip to Strasbourg, Slaugther now says that this girl was not a prostitute but a good friend. How many times did we hear that
story?

Delonte Holland of Italian Euroleague team Virtus Bologna, is
apparently close to being cut. For all his
other teams, here is a Top 10 of what he can do, in offense.

I actually did find at least one thing that Americans and Europeans
have in common – Love for fantasy basketball! The Euroleague fantasy
game is very different, since everybody can pick up any player – so
there are no drafts. It is my first season in Euroleague Fantasy and I
was wondering if Americans also play the Euroleague fantasy. We have
talked to Ronny Turiaf (I know he is not American) and he told us that
he is playing the Euroleague Fantasy Challenge which was kind of
surprising. Our readers are really into our Fantasy posts – they even
post all their moves they made each week. So are there Americans playing the European Fantasy
League?

Back to the NBA: I just happened to read an interview that Tony Parker gave to French sports
newspaper L?Equipe
. Wanna know the title of the article ? “Parker
makes new friends”. You will get the irony of it all once you get to
know a couple of excerpts. “There are not 9 French players in the NBA.
Only two of us (Boris Diaw and I) actually play a lot.”, “Ronny
[Turiaf] is inconsistent” and “If Mike Pietrus had a status, he would
have been offered a contract this summer.” were the highlights of the
interview.

 

Let’s end this week with BallinEurope’s “race to the Euroleague MVP”
since it might be interesting for some Golden State fans. Here are the
top three:

1. Arvydas Macijauskas (Olympiakos Priaeus)
2. Sarunas Jasikevicius (Panthianiakos Athens)
3. Nikola Pekovic (Partizan Belgrade)

You wonder why? Read the full ranking with detailed
information!

Happy Holidays – it comes from a European’s heart!