Happy New Year! Or as they say here in Poland - Szczesliwego Nowego Roku! Try pronouncing that as the clock strikes midnight after celebrating the New Year. A lot has happened in the world since my last blog entry. Christmas has come and gone, 2007 has come, and Saddam Hussein has gone....forever. I don't wish to get too deep on this blog so I will leave the politics of the entire Iraq situation alone and talk about a mess that is a little bit easier for Euroleague fans - and especially players - to relate to: Holiday travel.

In 1987, a hilarious movie titled "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles", starring Steve Martin and John Candy, told the achingly funny tale of the tribulations and frustrations that one often has to deal with during holiday travel. I don't know if this film was popular - or even released - in Europe, but our recent road trip to Le Mans and back to Wroclaw (for a Polish League game) nearly mimicked the absurd, evolving travel itinerary of this film...minus the comedy. It was bad enough that our planned itinerary involved a flight from Gdansk to Frankfurt and then off to the worst big-city airport in Europe - Charles De Gaulle in Paris - followed by a hop on the train to get from Paris to LeMans. That day, although ridiculous (I can't imagine that all the Euroleague teams take the train to LeMans), was a walk in the park compared to what happened to us the the day after our big win in France.

Carlos Cabezas wrote in an earlier blog about the crazy travel his team endured early in the season and I know most people who travel as much as we do as professional athletes have their own "entertaining" travel stories, so I won't go into every detail of our trip from Le Mans to Wroclaw, but it is no doubt the longest travel day in my life. A 6:15 wake-up call started us on our way via the train to Paris. From the TGV station it took us nearly an hour to get to the correct terminal at CDG - great airport! Thanks to a flight delay, we missed our connection to Warsaw, but we had options. A six-hour bus ride to Wroclaw or sleep in Warsaw and get on a 7:30 flight the next morning. Keeping in mind that we were not going home, but rather, to Wroclaw for a game that day against a team who was ahead of us in the standings. To make a long story short, we wound up getting a charter flight that night which got us to Wroclaw and into our hotel rooms at 1:15 am...nineteen hours after our day had started. My wife often tells me how jealous she is that I get to go on these Euroleague trips. She believes it to be some holiday that I am on while she is "stuck" at home with the kids. Some holiday this trip was! At least we won both games (thanks to Donatas Slanina's 10 three-pointers against Slask Wroclaw) before we hopped on the bus for an eight-hour ride back to Sopot.

Christmas is a time that most of us ballplayers really look forward to - even for those who don't actually celebrate the holiday. Most coaches give a four- to seven-day break to their teams, which usually leads to a quick trip home for Americans and/or any foreign players. After our game on December 22nd, we had to be back for practice on the evening of the 27th. It wasn't enough time for my wife and kids to head back and celebrate with our family in the U.S., but we decided to get out of Sopot and spend a couple nights in a castle two hours away. My wife, Alexis, contends that she enjoyed the time away from our everyday life in Sopot and my nearly four year-old son, Dawson, had a blast playing the brave knight protecting "our castle" (as he says) from the Dragon, with his plastic sword. But, beyond that the getaway fell a bit short of Christmas-time excitement for me. Ok, maybe I was a bit of a Scrooge based on the fact that the antibiotics that I had to take to remedy an infected elbow injury kept me from fulfilling the entire x-mas mantra of "eat, drink and be merry." Or perhaps it was the fact that the four of us were joined almost exclusively by about fifteen septuagenarian German couples as guests in the inn. Or the fact that my 18-month old son, Langdon, figured out how to escape from his crib, which kept both boys awake. Or the continuous rain. Or the flat tire that delayed our departure. Ok, now I'm just sounding like a Grinch. I'm glad my family enjoyed it, but I was happy to get back to Sopot and watch the boys devour their gifts under our tree.

This blog is taking me much longer to write than it should because it is hard for me to take my eyes off the college football game on TV. It was one of the most exciting football games I have ever seen. For Americans, January 1st is traditionally a day to recover from the previous night's New Year's Eve party by spending it on the couch watching college football bowl games all day. This particular game - The Fiesta Bowl - pitted one of the biggest powers in the history of college football, the red-and-white-clad Oklahoma Sooners, against a small-conference Cinderella team, Boise State, who is trying to prove they can compete with the the big-name star-laden programs. A game of amazing plays ended in a huge upset as BSU scored on a gutsy "Statue of Liberty" call in overtime. I don't know if this is of interest to any of you Euroleague fans, but it kept me up late and thinking about our next game, against another powerful, star-laden Olympiacos squad.

Well, almost two weeks later, unfortunately, I can't say we were able to follow Boise State's lead and upset the Reds. Even worse, we got blown out the following Thursday by Dynamo. I cannot talk too much about the loss in Moscow, because I was stuck at home trying to rehab my "injured" elbow. I put quotation marks around "injured", because it is hard to explain what is exactly wrong. Essentially, I banged my elbow on something during a Polish League game a month ago and my inflamed bursar sac has not healed correctly. I have been able to play with the minor pain for most of the last month, but was advised by our team doctor to take a week off to heal it and prevent surgery. I HATE missing games - I couldn't care less about missing practice, but I've always lived my basketball career by the motto my dad told me years a go: "You play when you're hurt. You play when you're sick. You don't play when you're injured." I don't feel as though I'm injured, so it really bothers me that I had to miss the Dynamo game. What's even worse is that the five or days off didn't help my elbow heal and I will most likely be having surgery after thisThursday's game with RheinEnergie Cologne.

With only three games remaining in the Euroleague regular season there is still a lot to be decided. A win over RheinEnergie this week could really do a lot to solidify our spot in the Top 16. We have struggled the last two weeks, (actually, we have been really kicking ass in Polish League, but lost big in Euroleague) but we still feel things are favorable for us coming down the stretch, with two home games in the last three - both against teams below us in the standings. We know that no game in this competition is a sure thing (except for maybe Panathinaikos - Wow, have they been impressive!), so we will have to go out and WIN these games - not just play them out on paper. I hope we can carry over our Polish League momentum (36-point win Sunday) into the end of the regular season and meet our primary goal of the season - the Top 16!

Take a look at Group B and you can really see that the end of the regular season will be a high-pressure action-packed set of games, with all five of the bottom teams legitimately fighting for the last two spots from that group. I really should invest in a cable provider that allows me to see more games. My Sky (from Britain) satellite allows me to see all my favorite shows - 24, Prison Break, Lost, Sopranos, and Entourage - but it doesn't give me Euroleague hoops. I do get ULEB games on Eurosport 2, but I just don't relate basketball with British English - it seems strange. I suppose it would be like Marv Albert or Bill Walton trying to comment on a cricket test match. What really made me wince was when, during a tie situation late in the Khimki-Alba game, the play-by-play guy actually said "for those of you who are new to the game of basketball, you should know that a game cannot end in a tie." WOW!!! I know that soccer is the biggest sport in the world (they are even trying to make it big in America, as evidenced by David Beckham's colossal contract), and for some insane reason it is okay to end that game in tie, but I think the sport of basketball is popular enough by now that anybody watching a game should know there are no ties in hoops.

At least for this week in Euroleague hoops, I predict: NO TIES!