Hello Europe! This is John Linehan, point guard for SLUC Nancy, back for the second post on this Euroleague.net blog. November 24 was Thanksgiving in the United States and I would like to wish everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving. The holiday is still a special day for me. When I’m back home in the States, it’s a day of gathering and giving thanks for all the blessings we have.

Here in France, we don’t celebrate it like that. My wife is French and we don’t celebrate at all. I still call home to the States and get a chance to talk to everybody. But we don’t get a chance to do a big dinner here, like we do back home. Sometimes we try to organize something with a dinner at someone’s house. But for the most part we usually have practice that day so we just come in and say Happy Thanksgiving to each other and that’s it.

Last Thursday though was kind of special because we had a game and it was a special one as well – beating Bennet Cantu to improve to 3-3. It’s definitely a big win for us. Cantu had been playing really well. To beat them, even if just by one point, was a great win for us. My whole mindset as captain of the team is to defend our home court. Usually in the past with four or five wins, you would definitely get into the next round. But the way our group is, with so much parity, everybody is around the same level. That win was definitely great. Hopefully we can get one on the road. That would be awesome.

It was good to win without Nicolas Batum having a strong game. It was a total team effort. We did it as a team. Even the games that we have lost we’ve been right in the game with every team. We’re getting better and we can definitely have a... more

Hello Europe! This is John Linehan, point guard for SLUC Nancy. And it's my pleasure to write this blog for the Turkish Airlines Euroleague website. I will be talking to you over the course of the season about my thoughts of playing in Europe's best club competition and basketball in general. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I like writing it and playing in the Euroleague for the first time in my career.

I've lived and played in Europe since 2004 and could have played in the Euroleague last season with 2010 French champions Cholet, but I chose to come to Nancy and we won the French title this past season. So now, I am finally in the Euroleague. You always hear about the Euroleague and how competitive it is, and everything you hear about it is true! It's a very high level. Every team is very good. In our first game against Cantu - a very good team - we kind of messed up at the end. But it was a great experience, a great atmosphere.

I played in the ULEB Cup/Eurocup two seasons and the EuroChallenge as well, but it really doesn't compare. Just the atmosphere of every game in the Euroleague is unbelievable. Every game is so important, so everybody is giving their all. It doesn't even matter about stats. Everybody just wants to win. You are going against guys who have played at the highest level in Europe. It's great to be out there.

There is a big buzz here in France about basketball on the heels of France taking silver at the 2011 EuroBasket and the signings in France of players like Nicolas Batum, here in Nancy with me, Tony Parker with ASVEL, Boris Diaw at Bordeaux, Ian Mahinmi at Le Havre and maybe Ronny Turiaf with ASVEL. For sure, basketball in France at its... more