One more final four

There is another final four this weekend, as Panathinaikos plays for the Euroleague 2009 championship today against CSKA Moscow.  The game is a rematch of the 2007 championship, won by Pana in Athens.  This year's final four is in Berlin.

Panathinaikos defeated arch-rival Olympiakos 84 to 82 - in a thrilling game - on Friday night to reach the championship. That was a good game to watch (the entire Euro final four is on NBA TV), with lots of back and forth action and good shooting. Olympiakos had a chance to tie at the end but Bourousis (which loosely translates to 'can you' or 'did you try'), their center, missed a pretty good look down low.

The Greens were led by two NCAA/NBA alums, Maryland's Sarunas Jasikevicus and Arizona State's Mike Batiste.  Jasikevicus hit a number of big shots, mainly 3s, and Batiste had 4 dunks in the second half.  In addition to those two, the game featured a number of NBA alums and other well known players.   In addition to Jasikevicus and Batiste, Pana's roster includes Greek national Vasili Spanoulis (Houston Rockets), Antonis Fotsis (Memphis Grizzlies where he played one season with Batiste) and Maryland's Drew Nicholas.

Olympiakos features Temple's Lynn Greer (Milwaukee Bucks), Jannero Pargo (Arkansas and most recently the New Orleans Hornets),  and George Printezis (drafted by San Antonio but traded to the Toronto Raptors).  But their most famous player is former Atlanta Hawk Josh Childress.   Childress had a nice game, and finished with 11 points, but never really asserted himself. Though he got his hand on Bourousis' missed shot his tip-in did not go in.

Olympiakos will not win Euroleague, but Childress has helped lead his team to the top of the Greek basketball league standings.   And he says he will honor his three-year contract to play with the Pireaus-based team and continues to say nice things about living and playing in Greece.

A few more Euroleague Final Four observations:

• The crowd was loud for the entire 40 minutes.  Pana-Olympiacos is similar to Carolina-Duke, with the main difference being Carolina-Duke fans generally respect the other team.  Not so in Greece, where sport seems to be an excuse to recreate the city-state wars of the 5th and 4th centuries BC (Spartan dog, Corinthian pig, etc. etc.!).  
• The crowd was so loud that you could barely hear the announcers, one of whom, Jeff Taylor, is a Carolina grad.
• Not only was the audio bad but I noticed how spoiled I am by American sports broadcasting.  The camera angle for this game was way to wide.  It almost felt as if you were watching the game from the upper deck rather than on television.
• The court was surrounded by a net so fans could not throw stuff on the floor or at each other.  Just another reminder that as crass and tacky as American sports can get, European sport is much worse. Our venues aren't surrounded by nets, smoking is not allowed and the uniforms do not feature advertisements instead of city names or logos.
• For the record, the Greens were playing 'for' Cosmote, a Greek communications company, while the Reds (Olympiakos) appropriately enough were playing 'for' CitiBank.

NBA Playoffs

As entertaining as the Bulls-Celtics series was, I still haven't gotten into the NBA playoffs. The other first round series' were terrible, but I expect to start watching more intently once the conference finals start.  Watching the Lakers battle the Nuggets and the Celtics play the Cavaliers will be worth staying up for.

NATS UPDATE

Some good news from southwest Washington as Sharion Martis threw the first Nationals complete game since the 2006 season in defeating the Cardinals 6-1 on Saturday.  It was Manager Manny Acta's first complete game as Washington's manager.  

The combination of Martis' effectiveness and the Nats' woeful bullpen made Acta's decision to let this starter finish what he started an easy one. 

Zimmerman extended his hitting streak to 21 games, and Adam Dunn hit his seventh homer for the Nats.  Offense does not seem to be a problem for this squad, and Lannan, Olson and rookie Jordan Zimmermann have each had good starts lately. Let's hope the complete game inspires the bull pen and the Nats string some wins together and get close to 500.