Tag: NBA

Ole! Argentina attains insurance for Ginobili, other NBA players

The way has been cleared for Spurs guard Manu Ginobili and his fellow NBA teammates on the Argentine senior men’s national team to play in the FIBA Americas Olympic qualifying tournament that is scheduled for their homeland in late August and early September.

According to a report on the FIBA Americas website, Argentine Basketball Federation president German Vaccaro confirmed that the federation successfully had secured insurance to indemnify the players against loss of the remainder of their NBA contracts because of long-term injury.

“At this moment I am just very happy to have managed this,” Vaccaro told the FIBA Americas site. “It has been a very exhausting process of endless meetings, moments of uncertainty and some disappointments. But as I said at the outset, we will send the best team possible to Mar del Plata.”

Some details of the insurance deal won’t be finalized until next week, so it is uncertain when the NBA players will be allowed to begin training with the national team, which opened its training Friday in Buenos Aires.

Vaccaro said the insurance company, Sancor, will become a sponsor of the team.

In an interview with the Express-News in mid-July, Giobili emphasized the importance of competing in the tournament in Mar del Plata, Schedule for Aug. 28-Sept. 11, as a final opportunity to compete in front of Argentine fans for himself and the teammates who have been together for a decade, including a run to the 2004 Olympic gold medal in Athens.

Earliest Turkish offers too low for Kobe to jump to Besiktas

Several reports are indicating that if the Turkish team Besiktas is really determined to get Kobe Bryant to play for them during the lockout, they will have to add a few more zeroes to his contract offer.

Bryant’s agent Rob Pelinka met with representatives of Besiktas earlier this week. According to Sportando and Alti Sport, the Turkish team’sfor Bryant to accept.

Another meeting is expected b y the end of the week where Besiktas is expected to raise their offer for Bryant to join Deron Williams during the lockout.

Hoops World.com is reporting that Bryant also potentially could play in China in a contract where The deal could pay him up to $10 million for a season, although he would likely have to agree to a contract without an NBA-out clause and it’s doubtful that Bryant would do that.

Bryant has been non-commital about playing overseas during the lockout.

But if he has an inkling that the lockout will be an extended one and other top NBA stars are flocking overseas, I would expect Bryant to join them if he doesn’t personally lead the exodus.

Capturing lightning in a bottle: Remembering Pecherov and Paspalj

Only hard-core NBA fans remember much about the career of Oleksiy Pecherov.

During his three-season career in the NBA, all of his five career starts came in the first eight days of November 2009.

Sure, they came on a miserable Minnesota team and most people weren’t watching that closely. His team would win only 15 games that season.

But in a game on Nov. 4, 2009, against Kevin Garnett and the Boston Celtics, Pecherov erupted for 24 points and eight rebounds in 34 minutes. It marked the only time that Pecherov would ever score more than 15 points in his career.

Danny Chau of Hardwood Paroxysm.com lists Pecherov’s big game for journeyman NBA players.

Pecherov’s might be the most stunning. It sparked a memorable line from Brendan Jackson on Celtics Hub.com afterwards:

“I just can’t fathom how a guy like this, that was guarded by Kevin Garnett, was able to have a game like this,” Jackson wrote after the game.

A similar game never came again. And Pecherov soon was out of the league.

Chau’s list is pretty complete, although he doesn’t mention one of the most memorable footnote players in Spurs history and his one shining moment.

That would be Zarko Paspalj, the chain-smoking 6-foot-9 power forward from Montenegro who played with the Spurs in the 1989-90 season. Paspalj’s big game came on Jan. 20, 1990, when tossed in 13 points — the only double-figure scoring game of his career — in 14 minutes in a 126-99 loss at Denver.

Paspalj grabbed four offensive rebounds and blocked two shots in the game against the Nuggets. He never had more than one blocked shot in any of the other 22 games of his NBA career. He produced 11 offensive rebounds in the remaining 168 minutes of his brief career with the Spurs.

Obviously, the cigarettes must have prepared him for Denver’s altitude for that big game.