Eurobasket 2022 Finals : SPAIN are European champions!!!

[Mirotic12]

Rudy Fernandez - 4 time European champion, 2 time World champion, 3 time Olympic medalist. Did someone call HOF ?

And two euroleagues

HOF? Maybe, but he was a definite role player on all of those Spanish national teams and on Real Madrid. He was always somewhere around like the 5th best player or so on those teams.

So he would sort of be like the European basketball version of Robert Horry.

[Mirotic12]

Think it’s settled that Lorenzo Brown is better than any Greek guard who ever lived, save maybe the naturalized American Nicky Galis.

Galis wasn't a naturalized player genius.

[Mirotic12]

It makes no difference which one of them was the MVP. Willy had a good tournament and to me he was close to being the MVP. His all-star nomination was deserved. I think that FIBA didn't want to give the trophy to American player now. Without Lorenzo Brown your team wouldn't have made it to the finals. Lithuania and Germany would've been too much for Spain. If Spanish team got out vs Lithuania, then they wouldn't even consider Hernangomez as the MVP because round 16 eliminated teams' players rarely get that kind of honor. Jokic wasn't in the all-star five for example and it was the right call.

The media decides the awards. FIBA has no say in it, other than to set the criteria, which they keep changing. It is entirely up to the media though. Which is why, like I said earlier in the thread, after Giannis got eliminated, that Giannis would probably still be in the all star five. The NBA gets to have 1/3 of the media for FIBA, so yeah. There was basically zero chance they were not putting Giannis in the team. Otherwise, it would affect the NBA's marketing him as the best player in the world. So Giannis got voted into the all star five, despite several players deserving it more than he did.

The NBA voters couldn't care less about Lorenzo Brown, and whether he should be playing for Spain. If anything, they are probably more likely to vote for Brown, because he is American. The views that Chuck Diesel is often expressing in this very thread - that basically implies the top 500 players in Europe are all Americans, is unfortunately, a view that is also held by probably at least 95% of the US sports media.

So actually, the voters might have actually been skewed in favor of voting for Brown. And no, FIBA cannot decide the results, nor change the vote. It's all controlled by the media.

The voting for these awards in EuroBasket, World Cup, and now the Olympics, since they just added that same award in 2021 for that tournament, are always going to be skewed towards NBA players and Americans, since American NBA media gets 1/3 of the vote, which is an overwhelming plurality of the vote, as compared to any other league or country.

If they did vote for Hernangomez with some kind of agenda, it would be to help promote the NBA, not anything to do with Brown's nationality status.

[Mirotic12]

Refurbished Spanish All-time Team

Lorenzo Brown
Chicho Sibilio
Wayne Brabender
Nikola Mirotic
Clifford Luyk

Mike Smith
Johnny Rogers
Serge Ibaka
Juan Domingo de la Cruz
Chuck Kornegay

Too many PFs and just one guard, but Scariolo would make this team a contender.

Yeah, Spain has been doing this for decades. Brabender was actually EuroBasket MVP, back in the day....

[lambchop]

Rudy Fernandez - 4 time European champion, 2 time World champion, 3 time Olympic medalist. Did someone call HOF ?

And two euroleagues

HOF? Maybe, but he was a definite tole plater on all of those Spanish national teams and on Real Madrid. He was always somewhere around like the 5th best player or so on those teams.

So he would sort of be like the European basketball version of Robert Horry.

He was the topscorer on that 2015 Euroleague championship team, but yea, go ahead and call him a role player. He was also one of Spain's best scorers behind Pau Gasol. That said, imo those Spanish teams were so stacked that you could pick one player between Marc Gasol, Navarro, Lllull, Rudy and just take them off the team and those squads would still have been equally successful. Pau Gasol was the true cheat code cause of his defense and how easily he could score. Those other players could all be considered the "5th best player".

[Hellcrooner]

Refurbished Spanish All-time Team

Lorenzo Brown
Chicho Sibilio
Wayne Brabender
Nikola Mirotic
Clifford Luyk

Mike Smith
Johnny Rogers
Serge Ibaka
Juan Domingo de la Cruz
Chuck Kornegay

Too many PFs and just one guard, but Scariolo would make this team a contender.

Yeah, Spain has been doing this for decades. Brabender was actually EuroBasket MVP, back in the day....

the other cases where way different.
Also the poster Forgot Jose Biriukov.

WAYYYYY different.

Im not a fan of the brown thing, but its not a excuse to put any shade on the TEAM.
wich by the way is reigning WOLRD CUP winner too ( and had 0 naturalizaed players when winning that).


other countrys have had their mike dantonis too.

[Mirotic12]

With Rubio, Alocen and Llull injured, and Sergio Rodriguez retired from NT duties, there weren't many options left. Guillem Vives was out for personal reasons also, and Quino Colom has officially been reclaimed by father time.
Bringing Nuñez to this tournament would've been a disaster, he's still has a long way to be ready.

Again, all this can be argued by many other teams. Everybody has multiple devastating injuries (Gallinari, Moritz Wagner, etc, etc, etc)

Anyway, I am at peace after the final. At least Spain played proper team basketball, besides being the usual cheats. France was intolerable: one thing is to live on borrowed time and acknowledge it, another is to act super-duper cocky about being in the final by virtue of a series of miracles.

Honestly, can you enlighten the forum on why Spain are (the usual) cheats? There are some sore losers out there, that is a fact...

Spain won fair and square and playing TEAM basketball while others played ISO basketball, catered to satisfy the ego of their NBA stars.

I assume they are talking about Spain's infamous flopping tactics. Navarro is the greatest flopper of all time, and Rudy is the second greatest flopper of all time. Felipe Reyes is also in the discussion with guys like Manu and such for the third best flopper of all time.

Navarro and Rudy's flopping skill was out of this world level. This might actually be Spain's first gold medal, if it was not for Navarro's and Rudy's legendary flopping skills.

This Spanish team, despite the Brown circumstance, was much more respectable and legitimate in that way. They didn't flop their way to at least 2-3 wins in the tournament, the way the other Spanish teams would.

[Mirotic12]

Let’s make it easier.

Everybody knew about Lorenzo playing with Spain NT over 2 months ago. And assuming that, none considered the Spaniards as real contenders.

It was 8-9 in the power rankings!

Why lorenzo makes NOW the difference and not before ? It is Lorenzo making Spain special or Spain making Lorenzo Special…??

Spain have played and incredible team basketball on both sides , sharing minutes , changing systems, assisting , getting turnovers, finding free shooters .

It has been a total masterclass of what basketball really is


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Exactly, even during group stages there were people giving Spain no chance, calling their roster not good enough anymore. I guess now instead of eating crow they cry about being cheated.

Fiba rules allow for it. I guess they want to increase the quality of their tournaments by allowing teams to add players to cover holes on their teams. Any team can take advantage of the rule. If you think it's not for you then ride your high horse with pride and in silence please. Stop being sour losers. I don't remember people crying when Slovenia won with Magic Randolph on their team. I guess people were too busy washing Luka's balls.

Also I am happy for Lorenzo. This tournament was clearly the pinnacle and the biggest stage of his journey man career. It's not like he basked in glory all those years. Let the guy have his moment, sour losers.

This forum was full of many complaints about it.

[Mirotic12]

the other cases where way different.
Also the poster Forgot Jose Biriukov.

WAYYYYY different.

Im not a fan of the brown thing, but its not a excuse to put any shade on the TEAM.
wich by the way is reigning WOLRD CUP winner too ( and had 0 naturalizaed players when winning that).


other countrys have had their mike dantonis too.

Yes, they were different examples, because they all were living and playing in Spain and I believe they all also spoke Spanish. That's not what I was referring to. I simply meant that Spain has always chosen to exploit the foreign player rules to their maximum limit for the given time.

In those previous times, the rules were much stricter. This current rule, where you can hire assassins off the street, and in a week they get nationality..........that was started by the USA back in the 1980s, and it is starting to get out of hand, and they need to change it now.

The USA started this nonsense when they took Rony Seikaly out of Greece's national team program, and stole him, so that he could play with them at the World Cup. It allowed them to have Tim Duncan, Patrick Ewing, and Hakeem on their national team also. So at the time, of the 80s and 90s, it was basically a Team USA thing.

But now this same rule is getting out of hand with some of these European national teams, with these types of Bo McCalebb, Mike Tobey, Anthony Randolph, and Lorenzo Brown examples. It's abusing that rule that USA was originally exploiting to claim that any player that played in NCAA is "American". Remember, under NBA rules, for example, Sarunas Jasikevicius is an "American player"....

But now that is being taken to an even more ridiculous level, with this paying mercenary players to just fly into your training camp, issuing them an immediate nationality, and then they go play for your national team, like a pro club player. It is ridiculous and makes no sense, because teams have 11 national team players and 1 pro club professional athlete player. Like someone else said earlier in the thread, that is what the EuroLeague is for. EuroLeague teams can hire and pay up to 17 Americans, if they want to, and they can buy titles if they want to. It's called pro club basketball. There is no place for this in national teams. Otherwise, there is no point in having national team competitions. It negates the whole entire point of it.

[Hellcrooner]

Yeah, Spain has been doing this for decades. Brabender was actually EuroBasket MVP, back in the day....

the other cases where way different.
Also the poster Forgot Jose Biriukov.

WAYYYYY different.

Im not a fan of the brown thing, but its not a excuse to put any shade on the TEAM.
wich by the way is reigning WOLRD CUP winner too ( and had 0 naturalizaed players when winning that).


other countrys have had their mike dantonis too.

Yes they were different examples, because they all were living and playing in Spain and I believe they all also spoke Spanish. That's not what I was referring to. I simply meant that Spain's has always chosen to exploit the foreign player rules to their maximum limit for the given time.

In those previous times, the rules were much stricter. This current rule, where you can hire assassins off the street, and in a week they get nationality..........that was started by the USA back in the 1980s, and it is starting to get out of hand, and they need to change it now.

The USA started this nonsense when they took Rony Seikaly out of Greece's national team program, and stole him, so that he could with them at the World Cup. And now this same rule is getting out of hand, with these types of Bo McCalebb, Mike Tobey, Anthony Randolph, and Lorenzo Brown examples.

i thought Seikaly was libanese?.

[txusto]

Refurbished Spanish All-time Team

Lorenzo Brown
Chicho Sibilio
Wayne Brabender
Nikola Mirotic
Clifford Luyk

Mike Smith
Johnny Rogers
Serge Ibaka
Juan Domingo de la Cruz
Chuck Kornegay

Too many PFs and just one guard, but Scariolo would make this team a contender.

Yeah, Spain has been doing this for decades. Brabender was actually EuroBasket MVP, back in the day....

the other cases where way different.
Also the poster Forgot Jose Biriukov.

WAYYYYY different.

Im not a fan of the brown thing, but its not a excuse to put any shade on the TEAM.
wich by the way is reigning WOLRD CUP winner too ( and had 0 naturalizaed players when winning that).


other countrys have had their mike dantonis too.

I'm not forgetting Chechu Biriukov: he's mother was Spanish so he is Spanish since birth (art. 17 Spanish Civil Code), not naturalised.

[Mirotic12]

i thought Seikaly was libanese?.

He is.

However, he was a refugee from Lebanon and he fled to USA, and then eventually to Greece, where he spent his teen years and learned to play basketball. He couldn't even go to Lebanon at the time, because of their political situation. Seikaly was training with Greece's national program from sometime around like the early '80s. He was actually in the senior men's training camps from I believe it was somewhere around '84 to '88. He traveled with the Greek team to tournaments, and he was the 13th man of the team. He sat on the bench for example, as Greece won the '87 EuroBasket, and during their practices, he was practicing with the national team, even during the tournament.

He was only eligible to play for Greece if he had turned 18 (like Giannis), and he had refugee status (which he did). But then there was a wait up to several years to get nationality, what at the time was referred to as "the bureaucracy" that kept him from getting his "status". In the meantime, as he waited, and as he practiced with the Greek national team, he had moved to the USA to play college basketball. And then, while he was in the NCAA, the USA got him to play at the '86 FIBA World Cup with other NCAA players. Thus, he could no longer play for Greece, even though while he had been in the NCAA, he would train with Greece's national team over the summers. So even though he was back with Greece's team for the '87 EuroBasket, all he could was train and practice with the team and sit on their bench during games. He couldn't play in games with them, because he was registered to the USA national team.

Years later, when Lebanon's national team was then finally an option for him, FIBA allowed him to switch from USA, to play for them, for those "improving the game around the world" reasons. But if it was not for USA taking him to play at the 1986 World Cup, with their college team, he should have eventually played with Greece. Probably, at either the 1990 World Cup, or the EuroBasket 1991.

[Hellcrooner]

Yeah, Spain has been doing this for decades. Brabender was actually EuroBasket MVP, back in the day....

the other cases where way different.
Also the poster Forgot Jose Biriukov.

WAYYYYY different.

Im not a fan of the brown thing, but its not a excuse to put any shade on the TEAM.
wich by the way is reigning WOLRD CUP winner too ( and had 0 naturalizaed players when winning that).


other countrys have had their mike dantonis too.

I'm not forgetting Chechu Biriukov: he's mother was Spanish so he is Spanish since birth (art. 17 Spanish Civil Code), not naturalised.

he also played for the CCCP.
wich was kind of a messy situation.

[Frichuela]

Again, all this can be argued by many other teams. Everybody has multiple devastating injuries (Gallinari, Moritz Wagner, etc, etc, etc)

Anyway, I am at peace after the final. At least Spain played proper team basketball, besides being the usual cheats. France was intolerable: one thing is to live on borrowed time and acknowledge it, another is to act super-duper cocky about being in the final by virtue of a series of miracles.

Honestly, can you enlighten the forum on why Spain are (the usual) cheats? There are some sore losers out there, that is a fact...

Spain won fair and square and playing TEAM basketball while others played ISO basketball, catered to satisfy the ego of their NBA stars.

I assume they are talking about Spain's infamous flopping tactics. Navarro is the greatest flopper of all time, and Rudy is the second greatest flopper of all time. Felipe Reyes is also in the discussion with guys like Manu and such for the third best flopper of all time.

Navarro and Rudy's flopping skill was out of this world level. This might actually be Spain's first gold medal, if it was not for Navarro's and Rudy's legendary flopping skills.

This Spanish team, despite the Brown circumstance, was much more respectable and legitimate in that way. They didn't flop their way to at least 2-3 wins in the tournament, the way the other Spanish teams would.

Really??? Goodness me...haters are gonna hate. You serious???

Let me see, many of those gold medals were won hands off in the final game, and in some cases by a margin of over 20 points. We are not only talking about 4 Eurobasket golds (2009, 2011, 2015, 2022) but also 2 gold medals in World Cups (2006, 2019) as well as two silver medals in consecutive Olympic games (2008, 2012). Are you saying that without the alleged flopping Spain would have lost all of them??

[txusto]

Honestly, can you enlighten the forum on why Spain are (the usual) cheats? There are some sore losers out there, that is a fact...

Spain won fair and square and playing TEAM basketball while others played ISO basketball, catered to satisfy the ego of their NBA stars.

I assume they are talking about Spain's infamous flopping tactics. Navarro is the greatest flopper of all time, and Rudy is the second greatest flopper of all time. Felipe Reyes is also in the discussion with guys like Manu and such for the third best flopper of all time.

Navarro and Rudy's flopping skill was out of this world level. This might actually be Spain's first gold medal, if it was not for Navarro's and Rudy's legendary flopping skills.

This Spanish team, despite the Brown circumstance, was much more respectable and legitimate in that way. They didn't flop their way to at least 2-3 wins in the tournament, the way the other Spanish teams would.

Really??? Goodness me...haters are gonna hate. You serious???

Let me see, many of those gold medals were won hands off in the final game, and in some cases by a margin of over 20 points. We are not only talking about 4 Eurobasket golds (2009, 2011, 2015, 2022) but also 2 gold medals in World Cups (2006, 2019) as well as two silver medals in consecutive Olympic games (2008, 2012). Are you saying that without the alleged flopping Spain would have lost all of them??

Yeah, flopping was the key. Not coaches, not the Golden Boys, not the had work, not the hustle, not the defense, not the talent.. FLOPPING.

[fteru6uhre54ew]

Great tournament btw. High scoring games probably one of the most in the history of the Eurobasket and really compete games with a lot of comebacks that had been decided in amazing ways. Teams that have suprised and anothers have been a disappointment, upsets, a lot of unique moments like end all the games with the same score lol.

All that with the best teams missing key players, With the best rosters possible could had been even more fun.

[Chuck Diesel]

Think it’s settled that Lorenzo Brown is better than any Greek guard who ever lived, save maybe the naturalized American Nicky Galis.

Galis wasn't a naturalized player genius.

Born and raised in New Jersey. Product of the American basketball system. Didn’t move to Greece till his mid 20’s. Giannis and his brothers are more Greek than little Nicky by a wide margin. Everything he accomplished as a hired mercenary for a foreign national team should be met with a giant asterisk. Shame on the Greek federation.

[BUANIX]

Let’s make it easier.

Everybody knew about Lorenzo playing with Spain NT over 2 months ago. And assuming that, none considered the Spaniards as real contenders.

It was 8-9 in the power rankings!

Why lorenzo makes NOW the difference and not before ? It is Lorenzo making Spain special or Spain making Lorenzo Special…??

Spain have played and incredible team basketball on both sides , sharing minutes , changing systems, assisting , getting turnovers, finding free shooters .

It has been a total masterclass of what basketball really is


Enviado desde mi iPhone utilizando Tapatalk

Exactly, even during group stages there were people giving Spain no chance, calling their roster not good enough anymore. I guess now instead of eating crow they cry about being cheated.

Fiba rules allow for it. I guess they want to increase the quality of their tournaments by allowing teams to add players to cover holes on their teams. Any team can take advantage of the rule. If you think it's not for you then ride your high horse with pride and in silence please. Stop being sour losers. I don't remember people crying when Slovenia won with Magic Randolph on their team. I guess people were too busy washing Luka's balls.

Also I am happy for Lorenzo. This tournament was clearly the pinnacle and the biggest stage of his journey man career. It's not like he basked in glory all those years. Let the guy have his moment, sour losers.

This forum was full of many complaints about it.

I wasn’t happy with it but as you all I never thought that Spain would win this cup so we can’t say that Lorenzo movement is the reason

As we can’t either say that Spain won titles trough flopping … come on guys Spain has been the second best national team for 2 decades legitimately


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[Mirotic12]

He was the topscorer on that 2015 Euroleague championship team, but yea, go ahead and call him a role player. He was also one of Spain's best scorers behind Pau Gasol. That said, imo those Spanish teams were so stacked that you could pick one player between Marc Gasol, Navarro, Lllull, Rudy and just take them off the team and those squads would still have been equally successful. Pau Gasol was the true cheat code cause of his defense and how easily he could score. Those other players could all be considered the "5th best player".

Rudy was the 5th-6th best player on that 2015 Real Madrid team.

Sergio Llull
Sergio Rodriguez
Felipe Reyes
Gustavo Ayon

All of them were better players than Rudy on that team. Then you had Andres Nocioni, whom was debatable with Rudy for the next best player on the team, and Nocioni was the EuroLeague Final Four MVP, not Rudy.

So Rudy was like the 5th or 6th best player on that team.

It's not to take anything away from him, as he has certainly had a great career. I would say his Hall of Fame odds are about:

FIBA Hall of Fame: 100%
EuroLeague Legend (EuroLeague Hall of Fame): 33%
Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame: 25%

[Mirotic12]

Think it’s settled that Lorenzo Brown is better than any Greek guard who ever lived, save maybe the naturalized American Nicky Galis.

Galis wasn't a naturalized player genius.

Born and raised in New Jersey. Product of the American basketball system. Didn’t move to Greece till his mid 20’s. Giannis and his brothers are more Greek than little Nicky by a wide margin. Everything he accomplished as a hired mercenary for a foreign national team should be met with a giant asterisk. Shame on the Greek federation.

Galis was not a naturalized player. No naturalized players were even allowed in the Greek League, until 1988.