Russia the unlikely champ of Eurobasket 2007

Unlikely and for several reasons.

Russians came to Spain with no other ambition than getting a pass for the 2008 Olympics. They were facing the hosts in the final, a team that everyone picked as final winner and that a whole country was ready to carry to the victory, after five silver medals in the previous competitions (make it six, now…).

It’s not over. Russia gave up 17 offensive rebounds. Russia was down five (59-54) with 1.30 to go.

BUT…

Euro 2007 will be remembered for the many close games, crazy comebacks and buzzer beaters and in the final game we had them all. To spice things up even more, the hero of the game was the most unlikely one.

Greeks have basket..balls

For sure.

This slogan is written in many t-shirts and banners that greek fans wear and take to the  arenas when their national team plays.

Well, they just show it’s not only some marketing trick, as I watched one of the most unbelievable comebacks ever seen in these competitions, that ended with Greece’s 63-62 win over Slovenia.

The end reminded me of another historic resurrection (or collapse, depending from your standpoint) in the fourth quarter: the 17 points lead squandered by Blazers vs Lakers in game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals.

Because the game was completely in Slovenia’s hands with a comfortable 16 points lead with 6.49 to go, 42-58. Yes, Greece scored 42 points in more than 33 minutes (jeez… gotta love FIBA basketball), and with the two offenses so cold, it seemed more than closed at that time.

Well, you do the maths: in the last 6.49 minutes Greece outscored Slovenia 21-4, scoring half the points they managed to put in the previous 33.

Even harder to believe, the score was 49-61 with 2.30 to go, meaning the game ended with a 14-1 Greece run in 150 seconds !!!!!!!!!

Italy loses game and 2008 Olympics

Maybe someone is waiting for my recap of today’s game.

Well, the truth is I didn’t watch it. The game started at 4.30 PM european time and I was out for a job meeting that ended at 8…

Seems the (devastating, by the way) meeting saved me nearly two hours of real pain: how could I have described a 58-67 loss vs an average opponent like Germany?

Dirk’s smile (!!) is perhaps the funniest thing in this sad afternoon for guidos hoops fans.

The boxscore is also clear enough: when you shoot 13/33 from 2 pt, 5/23 from 3 pt and the other team grabs 52 rebounds vs yours 31 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) every further comment should be useless.

I made a little research and found also these info, just to make the picture complete:

If you don’t like Euro 2007…

…you don’t like basketball.

And I’m not talking about NBA basketball, but hoops in general.

The list of the amazing finishes increased last night, with Vassilis Spanoulis beating Croatia with a long (very long…) three before time expired. I’ll try to post the link later. So after Lakovic (Slovenia, vs Italy) and Gurovic (Serbia, vs Greece) we watched another exciting, tough basket at the buzzer.

But the excitiment continues, and this time Italy was a part of it. Yes, because here I am telling you the story of a nice, OT, comeback 84-75 win vs Turkey. Follow my recap, it’s fun.

1st quarter. It ended with Turkey up 14 (15-29), a score that actually was 10-25 (largest lead), with a 14-3 turkish edge under the boards !! Need more? Belinelli started with 0/3, Turkey scored twice just before the shot clock expired, once on a fallaway three, Italy shot 5/16, Turkey 9/14. Clear enough?

Ok, you got the picture. Mehmet Okur and mostly Hidayet Turkoglu started doing their job, scoring whenever they wanted, and Peker did the rest. Italy was… well, I don’t know. Zero ideas, no offensive game, ghosts walking under the boards. Terrific start.

Good, but not enough

Italy’s second round at the Eurobasketball 2007 in Spain started with another defeat (wow !).

Ok, a 74-79 loss vs Lithuania is somehow honourable, since everybody picked Lithuania at least as semifinal bound before the competition. I say: yes, it is, but we could have won this game.

While it’s not suprising that we were simply overwhelmed under the boards (44-29), with guard Siskauskas (6 rebounds), Nuggets forward Linas Kleiza (9) and Ksistof Lavrinovic (5) whipping our centers (?), it’s disappointing that we forgot to run plays for Belinelli and Bargnani down the stretch, when they were hot and could have given us a chance to win the game.

Golden State Warriors’ rookie scored 9 consecutive points in the fourth quarter only to be forgotten in the last minutes, while Bargnani had another solid game (15 + 7, leading us in both categories) but wasn’t feeded enough at the end, when Italy collected silly turnovers and missed shots. So we couldn’t cut the 74-77 deficit with 50” to go.

Italy goes to Madrid, Serbia home

Mixed feelings at the end of this final day of the first round.

As largely predicted, Italy beat Poland, even if our win (79-70) was tougher than excpected. Azzurri were in control basically for the whole game, with margins between 14 and 5 points. The key factors for this win were two: shooting percentages and controllling the boards.

I mean, it’s pretty difficult to lose when you 1) shoot 12/21 from three point land and 2) outrebound the other team 34-26.

My deep knowledge of the game is displayed by these smart comments:

Parker better than us down the stretch

Better game, bitter end. Same taste like last night.

Maybe I should just guve a cut to the “Mr. Longoria” jokes and simply say that Tony Parker is a fantastic basketball player.

He almost singlehandedly beat us in the second game of the Eurobasktball 2007 played in Alicante, a 62-69 loss to France. 

What can you say when a player ends with 36 points, more than 50% of his whole team? He started scoring France’s first 9 points and 13 of the first 17, answering Andrea Bargnani’s excellent start. 

Parker reached 27 after three quarters, when France’s total was 51, and carried the Blues in the last minutes.

After Bargnani’s three pointer put Italy ahead at 60-57 with 4 minutes to go, the Spurs PG ignited a 10-0 break that basically closed the game, nailing a tough trey just before the shot clock expired to tie Andrea’s shot and scoring on another two drives to make it 60-67. Boris Diaw then sealed the game blocking Belinelli’s (soft) layup attempt.

The game was pretty enjoyable, if you love close, hard fought, tactical battles. Your typical FIBA basketball, to sum it up.

Hurting defeat to start Euro 2007

Bad overall game, wonderful and exciting 4th quarter, terrible end.

This in a nutshell is the story of Italy’s start at the Eurobasket 2007 in Spain, a 68-69 loss vs Slovenia.

It hurts when you lose with a three pointer at the buzzer, and it hurts even more when you basically trailed 39.30 minutes, went up (for the first time !) by 1 point only then, and, after your opponent regained the lead, you scored a three pointer to apparently win it with less then 5 seconds to go.  

This is the story of the crazy finish, with Matteo Soragna’s corner trey frustrated by Jaka Lakovic heroics from downtown just before the horn sounded. It was a heck of a shot, so more power to FC Barcelona’s lefthanded guard.

I suggest you to log on to You Tube and find a video about this tomorrow, very fun to watch (unless you are a guido of course).

The rest of the game was something between boring and embarassing for Italy, with the first half ending at 25-38 (!!), that became a 45-56 slovenian lead after three quarters.

No news = good news?

Not necessarily.

First of all let me welcome some new readers that came across the first italian Sixers blog while I was out and commented my posts: I wish they will come back here often.

So yes, during my three weeks off nothing really important happened, synthetically here are the main facts:

1) Stephen A. Smith will no longer write his column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Smith, in case you don’t know, is (was ?) one of most controversial sports writers in the City of brotherly love, and a popular tv commentator, covering basketball also for ESPN. I guess this is more news for bloggers and Philly guys than for the average NBA fan.

I never really liked SAS, but I was not such a big critic of him either, he is a talented writer that simply got too arrogant with fame and success. By the way, before starting Sixers4guidos I wrote him a couple of emails to ask for his opinion on Sixers topics but never got a reply. Other Philly based journalists were polite enough to write me back few lines.

So we won’t read his articles anymore, while for sure will continue seeing him face and hearing his - pretty annoying -voice on ESPN (sorry Brian…).

At the end of the day this is really no news, I don’t care that much, honestly.

2) Celtics signed James Posey. Uhm…. I explained why I was not impressed by Ainge’s trades for Allen and Garnett and even exchange jokes with posters and fans that were praising him, but I must admit this is a very good addition.

Serbia is U19 World Champ after kicking US team’s asses

(Small break from Sixers related topics) 

Serbia is new Under 19 basketball world champ, having defeated US team in the final game of the World Championship played in Novi Sad (Serbia).

Serbian guys won the final 74-69, with Mladen Jeremic scoring 24 points and Milan Macvan 19 (+ 10 rebounds).

For the US team the best scorer was Deon Thompson with 16 while Patrick Beverley had 15 points + 8 rebounds.

Milan Macvan was named MVP of the championship.

Take a look at the roster of the new champs: there is also a 2.21 m (7′4) 19 y/o center…

This might be no big news for many of you guys but I hope that real knowledgeable hoops fans care: it basically means that a new generation of serbian players is going to come soon and hopefully some of these guys make it to the NBA. So you better start to get used to their names quickly (Billy King please take note !).