In lieu of having any NBA transactions to talk about, we’ll look at the world at large instead.
Of all the players to have finished last season on an NBA roster, six have already signed abroad. One of the first to go was Mustaka Shakur, who started the year with the New Orleans Hornets and ended it with the Washington Wizards. For whatever reason, the Wizards did not offer him a qualifying offer, seemingly moving on from Shakur’s …
An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The EuroCup Final Four
April 15th, 2011
The NBA playoffs are basically upon us, and if you don’t pick a Bulls/Spurs finals, you’re a brave man.
However, the onset of these playoffs is far from the only thing happening in basketball right now. After all, this is the crescendo of many league’s seasons, not just the NBA’s. This is particularly true in the cases of the intercontinental European leagues; the EuroLeague, which has already been covered, and the EuroCup, which is about to be.
An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The EuroLeague Final Eight
March 24th, 2011
In terms of the calibre of non-international competitive basketball, the EuroLeague is second in the world only to the NBA. That is to say, of all the leagues in the world not to excessively overuse snippets of Busta Rhymes songs, or turn nightly to the tortured genius of Kiss Cam, the EuroLeague is the best. If you love basketball, you’ll love watching the EuroLeague. If you love basketball and yet have never watched the EuroLeague, you haven’t tried hard enough.…
Mike Hall Wants You To Know That Things Are Different In Europe
February 3rd, 2011
Do a Google image search for “mike hall.” The third and fourteenth results are hilarious.
Former George Washington forward Mike Hall has played the majority of his professional career in Italy. After going undrafted in 2006, Hall caught on with the Washington Wizards for training camp, and joined the D-League upon being released, angling for a midseason call-up. The strategy worked; the Wizards called up Hall to a ten day contract in late February 2007, retained him for a second …
More than one person has asked me in the past for a definition of how basketball works in Europe. Those persons are always American. They see words like “domestic competition,” “EuroLeague” and “Cup,” and they panic. All of those are concepts alien to the NBA, an incestuous league that only plays with itself, and they are not understood by the majority of American NBA fans. (Or, if not the majority, at least some.)
