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The Eurobasket in Lithuania has started and no thread yet :<

http://www.eurobasket2011.com/en/default.asp

No big surprises so far. I haven't watched the Spain-Poland match, but looks like it was awfully close. Turkey won comfortably vs Portugal, so did Serbia and France. Greece vs Bosnia is no blowout as I would have thought .. still anything possible (Ok, now it looks more ominous for Bosnia ).

Enes Kanter was pretty impressive with 14 pts (7/9 FG), 7 reb., 1 TO in 22 minutes.

Spain needed a lot of help from the refs to get a win against Gortat-less Poland. Turkey had Enes Kanter dominating the Portuguese team for an easy win. I will be waiting for the UK - Lithuania game.

It looks Kanter had an impressive game (didn't watch), though it was against lowly Portugal.

Spain is having their same showing as in 2009. That would be struggling in group stages.

No bigs in Israel? They have no answer for Kaman.

Yes Kaman (18pts, 10 reb, 21min) and Dirk (25(10/14)/3/3 in 27min) had no real problems, but that was to be expected. It was a good win, but everything else would have been a huge upset. with 5 games in 6 days its good that dirk and kaman got some rest.
italy tomorrow will be a whole different story


what was up with spain? more problems than i expected, especially Rubio 0 pts, 0/5 FG, 0 Reb, 0 Ast, 0 Blocks, 2 TO (and 2 Steals) in 16min? Did he really play as bad as the Boxscore suggests?

Blame Turk wrote:Spain needed a lot of help from the refs to get a win against Gortat-less Poland.

I think that's a very gratuitous statement. It was a bad game from Spain to begin the tournament and that's it. They still came out with a win.
A case could be made about how it is so difficult the get a fair refereeing when playing vs Turkey in Turkish territory or playing vs Greece in Greek land, every professional player and coach in Europe knows that but I guess it's better to drop it.

Very entertaining Day 1. No upsets but a lot of top teams struggled and a lot of the supposed 'weak' teams played way above themselves.

What do people think are going to be some of the most interesting games to watch?

DeBlazerRiddem wrote:What do people think are going to be some of the most interesting games to watch?

In the group stages:

Sep. 1.: Italy vs Germany .. other than that the games should be pretty much straight forward. On the official homepage Turkey vs Great Britain was named match of the day, but I only see Luol Deng as a possible threat for Turkey.
Sep. 2.: Turkey vs Lithuania and Germany vs France
Sep. 3.: Nothing really that exciting. Greece and Russia should win their games comfortably
Sep. 4.: Italy vs France and Spain vs Lithuania and Germany vs Serbia
Sep. 5.: Spain vs Turkey and Serbia vs France. Croatia vs Greece might be interesting as well

Someone posted all of Turkey's FG in the Portugal match on Youtube:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcUdtt9kgVI[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chCT37tRyt8[/youtube]

Latvia vs Serbia is my pick for game of the day.

I'm able to watch the Spain - Portugal match on NTV Spor's official homepage from Germany:

http://www.ntvspor.net/eurobasket2011-canliyayin

The quality is pretty poor and actually NTV Spor is a pay2view channel in Turkey. So I wouldn't be surprised if they black out the stream once the Turkey - GB match starts.

Spain is crushing Portugal and the 4th quarter is about to start.

Stretch82 wrote:I'm able to watch the Spain - Portugal match on NTV Spor's official homepage from Germany:

http://www.ntvspor.net/eurobasket2011-canliyayin

The quality is pretty poor and actually NTV Spor is a pay2view channel in Turkey. So I wouldn't be surprised if they black out the stream once the Turkey - GB match starts.

Spain is crushing Portugal and the 4th quarter is about to start.

ESPN3 seems to have most of the games available. I just registered for an att email and ESPN accepted that as my "provider"

turkey shooting the lights out. gb not able to handle the penetrating prelzic .. they all collapse on him, leaving the turkish guards open at the 3ptline.

10-1 assists at half time in favor of turkey. gb really struggles on offense and luol deng has to carry them pretty much himself.

Turkey looked really strong - especially the bench. It makes me happy that the team doesn't rely on Hedo too much. Balanced scoring and playtime (23min max for a single player). The only bad thing was the free throw shooting

the italians are flopping like crazy .. i can understand why nowitzki and bauermann are upset

Did look like Gallinari flopped twice. Reffing very random overall.

gallinari forcing bad shots in the post. thats not his game.

I'm liking this announcer (ESPN3 guy).