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Did you miss me? I'm back to pick the Final Four

Thu, 01 May 2008 11:28:37 GMT

I wish I could say that due to the outpouring of reader's complaints pertaining to a lack of blogs by me, the Euroleague website has begged me to give final four predictions. But I can't, thanks people, geesh, nobody wrote, nobody sent flowers, nobody was worried about poor old me once the Euroleague season ended for Roanne. But I’m back anyway and ready to give you my predictions for the Final Four in Madrid.

Disclaimer: I have not played against any of the teams in the Final Four this year.

Game 1: Montepaschi Siena vs. Maccabi Elite

Siena cruised through the playoff against Fenerbahce. In the Top 16, they went 4-2, but the two losses were at Partizan by 3 points and at Panathainkos by 1 point. Those are arguable the two toughest atmospheres in Europe. Right now they have a lot of time to actually focus on the Final Four because domestically they locked up the first position. A lot of people do not realize what a burden it can be to have to prepare for two entirely different leagues at the same time. They have five guys who average double figures, a tough team to guard, but more importantly, less chance of one or two guys having a bad game and hurting them. Maccabi is Maccabi and once again they have a tough team. But they have had to fight this year in the Israeli League and have not been as invincible as usual. They are similar to Siena, basically six guys in double figures, with Will Bynum at 9.9. It took three games against Barcelona to get to the Final Four, but beating Barcelona is no small feat. Since Siena has won so convincingly all year and when they lose it almost seems like a fluke, I am going to say…………………… Montepaschi 85 - Maccabi 78

Game 2: Tau Ceramica vs. CSKA Moscow

Seems hauntingly close to this summer, Spanish National team vs. Russian National team in Madrid…. We all know what happened. Ok, true, these are club teams and the rosters are different, but you have to see the connection. Seems to me that the same J.R. Holden plays for both teams and hit a pretty big shot in Madrid. I also would like to note that fellow blogger Tomas Van der Spiegel seemed to conveniently slip back onto a Final Four team… Kudos to you. Not one player for CSKA plays more than 30 minutes a game. Coach Messina has a deep roster and he uses it. They had a slight hiccup against Olympiacos in the first game, but like Siena, this is a team that has to have a lot of things go wrong to lose. They hold a 2-0 advantage this year against Tau, but they are not going to go out without a fight. Just like CSKA, Tau uses a lot of players every game, but honestly I don't know who is going to play big minutes next game. They have shuffled players in and out all year for whatever reason, injury, disciplinary reasons, releasing, etc. It is amazing though that in just 22 minutes of play, Tiago Splitter has a ranking of 16.7. I just think the continuity of CSKA is going to be an advantage. As a player, when the minutes vary dramatically, or players switch, it is sometimes hard to get great chemistry. Even though it is...

Holiday giving...it's the thought that counts!

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 12:44:55 GMT

Merry Christmas...I guess I get to be a dorky holiday blogger guy. This is my favorite time of year: the corny music, lights, decorations and the excessive eating and drinking all around. But most importantly, as a basketball player in Europe, it is about the halfway point in the season and one of our only breaks that will last longer than one day.

The one thing I do not like about Christmas is the overdose of stress that comes with looking for gifts. I understand it gives parents an excuse to spoil their children, but the fighting through crowds in various shopping centers and malls, finding the right stuff, making sure you get something for everyone, and making sure you don't buy the same thing two Christmases in a row for somebody - my Aunt Sue's problem, as you'll recall from a previous blog - can all be a little much.

Fortunately, I avoid some of this pressure because my best friend Mike and I have a long-standing agreement to not exchange Christmas presents. Actually, it's more like a gift-giving stalemate that resulted from an incident back in Christmas 2002, the last time either one of us bought the other a gift. My gift to him in 2002 was the lovely glass colored ball thermometer pictured here. (I didn't know how to explain it and disregard the Chinese, unless it says "Send money to Adam"!)

First, as background information, you should know that this guy Mike is some kind of gift glutton. He has wiggled his way into my parents' good graces over the years to the point that the usual 50-50 split of family gifts with my brother and I has now been chopped into thirds. Even though he was already hogging gifts from parents who are not his, Mike still had the audacity to contend that my Christmas 2002 present to him, part of our annual exchange until then, didn't actually count as a gift because it replaced something I broke. Two months earlier I had knocked a table-top thermometer he owned off a shelf during a pillow fight with a girl at our university. Sounds interesting, I know, but in fact I merely misfired a pillow at some college girl who was infringing on the sacred territory of a male dormitory room. (My Roanne teammates will certainly find it quite believable that I missed an easy target from short range, but I blame it on a slight breeze coming into the room and a poorly-weighted feather pillow.)

Anyway, Mike couldn't have really expected me to buy him a new thermometer, since they were tough to get that year (something to do with a thermometer shortage in the Western Hemisphere). Later, when I found the glass Chinese thermometer, I thought it was a great gift. Mike, however, claimed that it was not really a gift, but rather an obligatory replacement for the thermometer I broke. He insisted that I was in default of our annual Christmas gift exchange.

To this day, Mike is holding me accountable for a gift in 2002. He bought me a shirt that year, and he won't buy me another gift until I make up for the gift deficit. Of course, I won't buy him any more gifts because he refuses to buy me any and because of the shaky treatment I received when I gave him the thermometer. The stalemate lives on.

As for this Christmas, we would like to give Chorale Roanne fans the gift of a win in Belgrade against Partizan this week. Our earlier loss to Partizan at home might mean we really owe our fans a win. So, like Mike's...

The best opponents and restaurants can teach something

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:02:49 GMT

Happy Thanksgiving! That was for the Americans who play overseas that either forgot or at least didn't hear anyone say those words to them personally last Thursday. I was lucky enough to keep one of my holiday rituals alive by watching my beloved Detroit Lions (American football) via the internet (sling box) lose for about the bazillionth time on Turkey Day, a tradition in itself. But I did once again miss the traditional turkey dinner, the heavy drinking amongst friends the night before and writing out my Christmas list for my family…mainly so my aunt doesn't get me another industrial grade flashlight. She gave me two in back-to-back Christmases when I was a little kid. Instead, I was invited to eat at the prestigious Troisgros. Roanne is a town of 38,896, according to Wikipedia, but it somehow is the home of the #1 restaurant in the world. Halt, I know what people are thinking: the best restaurant must be in Tokyo, or another will say it is in some town in Italy, or even in Tawas Bay. I understand that certain publications will rank things differently and people will claim they know, "the best restaurant ever." So be my guest and type Troisgros into google and you will find it in almost every ranking for top places to dine. After that meal, however, I have found myself waking up late at night in a cold sweat and asking the same questions: What if this is the best food I will ever eat? Where do I go from here? Will I now scoff at my mother's home-cooked meals? It is kind of a slippery slope; I have reached the pinnacle of my eating career at such a young age, I have nowhere to go but down. Suffice it to say that the food was great and the service borderline intrusive; I think that if I had asked, the servers would have chewed my food and then regurgitated into my mouth like I was a baby bird.

Fortunately, after playing the best team in Europe, my feelings regarding the future are much more positive. Our team had been competitive in its first four Euroleague games. One less mistake in two of the games and our team would be 3-1. Instead, we went into the game against Panathinaikos with a 1-3 record and too many moral victories. Moral victories are when you play well, or do something at a level nobody expected, but you still lose. Moral victories are like a mirage: you can see it, you just can't touch it or keep it. It can also cause problems because it can delude people into thinking, "Well we are so close, let's keep going in this direction, we must be doing something right." I think it is because athletes and others closely associated with organized games of any sort have such fragile egos (or do they just have God-complexes?) If you called them losses every time, they might just crawl into a corner and die; (ok, probably not…come on, work with me). I really don't understand moral victories: a loss is a loss. On Wednesday we played a home game against the "Greeks" (who feature two Americans, a Lithuanian, a Croatian, a Slovenian, a Serb and some guys actually from Greece), ranked in several internet istes as the #1 team in Europe. They put on a clinic with their pick-and-roll offense, unselfish play and overall team basketball. We lost and nobody would say it was a moral victory. This is where the optimistic side of me comes alive. Now our team and everyone involved has a chance to step back and re-evaluate themselves. I know I did…..with a little help from the coach.

If eating in one of the best restaurants in the world could be seen in a negative light, since there is nowhere to go but down, playing one of the best teams in the world and losing big could be seen positive light, since there should be nowhere to go but up. If they really are...

Banned and gagged: a family affair

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:22:52 GMT

Banned by my own fan club: it's a family affair. This week, I was kicked out of my own fan club. Actually, it is more of a doting father mass e-mail supplying informed updates about my basketball life for friends and family than a real fan club. Being family and friends, they either actually care what I am up to and how the season is going, or more likely, they love my dad enough not to offend him by telling him they have heard enough about me. I was not privy to these e-mails until this season. After a critical assessment of the barrage of e-mails flooding my inbox, the boss (my mom) removed my address from the distribution list to prevent the author (my dad) from feeling bad. She informed me that my input would not be taken into account and that if I could not just enjoy the e-mail, I was not welcome to receive them any longer. It was kind of odd to be dismissed from a group specifically created to hear about me: If I cannot fit in with this group, do I fit in anywhere? My brother would answer with a resounding "NO!" Those people who have not blocked the mass e-mails should know that it was a clean break: but if you receive any baseball cards, coins or my much-coveted rubber band ball in the near future, please return them, as my dad has power of attorney.

I don't want you to get the wrong impression of my parents. Even though they did kick me out of my own fan club, they are great. They always know what to say (or not to say!). For example, my parents are great with advice that usually comes out sounding unorthodox; especially my dad. He has three ways of dealing with me after a game. If we win, a little pat on the back and "We are proud of you son" is enough: He doesn't say much because we won and no further encouragement is needed. If I am shooting poorly, he says, "When you are on, shoot; when you're off, shoot until you are on again." If we lose, my dad says, "Well, as long as you looked good in your uniform." Although I may not immediately agree with whichever nugget of knowledge he chooses to share, it always seems to hit its mark eventually, when I let it digest. Which reminds me of why he is still smarter than me… but far older.

This week has gone a little smoother on the court than off. It took us some time to get to the fine city of Bamberg, our first Euroleague stop. Let's be exact: we took a two-hour ride to the Lyon Airport, a one-hour flight to Munich, where a canceled flight led to a two-hour bus trip to Nuremberg (with everyone else from the canceled flight), from which we flew another hour into Bamberg. With all of the sitting-around time at airports, checking in, getting luggage and waiting to be transported via bus instead of plane, the trip took 10 hours. I Mapquested the route from Roanne to Bamberg and the estimated driving time is 8 hours. Anyways, we made it and in our team's first Euroleague game in over 50 years, we came out with a win at the buzzer. Brion Rush hit the shot, his second game-winner in a row. Brion has been playing extremely well and it has been a pleasure to ride his confidence the last few games. The atmosphere in Bamberg's gym, dubbed "Freak City", was incredible as usual and many of my teammates said it was one of the loudest gyms they had played in during their careers.

It was doubly exciting for me because Brose Baskets Bamberg was the team that beat my former team, the Artland Dragons,...

Au revoir swim trunks, bienvenue yoghurt ferment

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:04:05 GMT

I arrived in France to begin my stint with Chorale Roanne in early August. Three days after touching down, we had the weekend off due to a mandatory coaches clinic. I had time; so I thought a great way to become acclimated to the city was to pay a visit to the community pool. Seconds after entering the pool area I was confronted by two lifeguards. I figured that I must be kind of a big deal, in town a total of four days and people already know recognize me...nice. Soon after, with no knowledge of French, I realized that they were not asking for my autograph, but somehow I had done something wrong. After a few minutes a security guard (not a lifeguard, I guess they need security for these types of situations) came up and with passable English told me I could not swim because my bathing suit was too large (and thus, according to them, unsanitary). I would have to switch my suit for a Speedo, he said, or else I couldn't swim. I kindly told them that I left my Speedo at home (a lie, of course) and that if I could just get by this one time, I would wear the right bathing suit next time. They huddled up again and it seemed to be going pretty well and they came back with a very fair compromise. The one lifeguard had an extra Speedo in his bag and said I was more than welcome to use it today. I have to say that was a very gracious offer, but I politely declined, feeling uncomfortable with the idea of wearing another man's Speedo. (I have always been a boxer guy and never did swim team). I thought it odd that for sanitary reasons wearing a large, brand new bathing suit, was a "no-no," but sharing tiny undergarments with strangers was no problem, but I did appreciate the kindness on the part of the first non-basketball related French people that I encountered. That day cemented my feeling that being able to blog on Euroleague.net this year will be a blessing because now I will get to put on paper some of the odd things that always seem to happen to me, on and off the court.

Wow, since you already know what I underwear I prefer, and you want to know name. I am, as I hope it says somewhere above, Adam Hess. This is my fourth season out of the College of William & Mary. I played my first two seasons for the Czech Republic powerhouse Nymburk, which now competes internationally in the ULEB Cup, but was in the FIBA Europe Cup during my stay there. This past season, I moved to the Artland Dragons of the German Bundesliga. The total population of the town of Quakenbrueck, where we played, was under 14,000 people. We created quite a fuss when our team made it to both the cup and playoff finals. Made both, but couldn't finish: we lost by two in the cup and 3 games to 1 in the playoff final series. This season, I thought…well, if you can't beat them, join them. So I finagled my way onto last year's French League champion and Semaine Des As winners, Chorale Roanne.

Due to our team's success, we have qualified for the Euroleague and I am now considered a rookie again because it is my first season playing internationally at this level. So the first positive is that being considered a rookie makes me feel young. I am only 26, but my teammates think I act like an old man with my stretching habits and warm-up stiffness. The team is led by our coach, Jean-Denys Choulet, a man who loves a fast-paced offense and blues music. He believes in getting us in shape on the...