It's already been reported on spanish TV and it makes a lot of sense. According to reports, Joan Laporta (FCBarcelona's President) finished the negotiations himself.

Details and breakdown after the jump.

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http://www.as.com/baloncesto/articulo/baloncesto-wolves-suben-oferta-ricky/dasbal/20090817dasdaibal_2/Tes

According to As, a spanish sports newspaper more trustworthy than Marca, the Wolves are still trying to find a way to bring Ricky this year.

According to the paper, there's a 4.6M$ (3.2M€) offer, just 300K short of Real Madrid's, which Joventut was willing to accept.

There are more Minnesota business involved in the offer, and a direct intervention by Glen Taylor himself.

Continue reading this post »

From marca.com

"I'll go to the NBA in 2011"

Continue reading this post »

According to Marca Kahn and Fegan have an offer for Joventut consisting on 4M€ (over 6M$) for Ricky's buyout (which is 5.7M€.

That's the biggest offer Joventut has received, as there are others from European teams, most prominently Real Madrid (always according to Marca, which is always biased for Real Madrid).

The report says those 4M€ come from sponsor deals from businesses around Minnesota.

On the lawsuit: Ricky is in a small town running his camp and improving his shot with Jarinn Akana, a shooting coach who works for Fegan's agency, so he hasn't had the chance to sign the papers to retire the lawsuit against Joventut, what he's going to do according to sources.

Jordi Cairó, from Joventut's staff said that the Wolves arrived adding some positive things.

There are still two days of meetings left, and Ricky's will is to fix all this within a week, but Joventut is expected to make it as long as possible to get the most out of it.

Rules:

Lottery selections + Blazer selections (24, 33, 38, 55, 56)

Both images and text accepted.

Scoring:

Lottery:
Exact match: 5 points
1 position away: 3 points
2 positions away: 2 points
3 positions away: 1 point

Blazer Picks:
Exact match: 10 points
Player selected by the Blazers with another pick: 7 points
1 position away: 3 points
2 positions away: 2 points
3 positions away: 1 point

Traded picks:

If the Blazers trade a pick, that pick would score like a Blazer pick regardless of who's picking.

Deadline:

June 24th 6:00 PM PDT

Big Prize:

The Winner gets a Barcelona tour with local guide, some beers or similar, and maybe even a ticket to a Joventut / Barcelona home game. Travel expenses not included (I can't offer much more than that).

Hey guys!

First of all, I want to introduce myself,

I'm Daniel, from Barcelona. I usually post on blazersedge.com, and I have a question for you: What do you think about Sergio Rodriguez?

There's been a lot of speculation around him, and looks like he's going to be traded this summer, and D'Antoni's Knicks look like one of the best fits.

I'll copypaste a piece I wrote about him two weeks ago:

Sergio was a raising star in Spain.
He came to the Blazers à la Rudy, knowing he’d make at least twice as much staying in Europe, but he wanted to come because of the challenge.
19 year old playing with the pros in Spain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9vmcTN4Lc4

His style of play relies a lot on confidence. If he feels he can, he just takes over the game, he forces his rythm into everyone, which his teammates are used to, and his opponent usually aren’t. This makes him (if used well) an amazing PG off the bench, as he’s capable of turning a game upside down changing the flow of the game.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPFEUA1pGeI

He knows how to play big games. He forced Spain into the World Championship’s final back in 2006. Seehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyxdHjrCl2c

When he came to Portland he soon became a fan favorite, even when he barely played (he had the likes of Dan Dickau or Juan Dixon over him in the rotation). 10 easy baskets were not enough for Nate at the expense of 2 TO.

He turned 20 the year he came to Portland. A young World Champion with great attitude who passed on the big money to come to the other side of the world to play with the best.

His teammates loved him, the fans loved him, but his coach was busy talking to the press about everything he didn’t like about him. Two different point guards, two opposite ways of understanding the game, and there he was Sergio, he knew he had to please his coach, so he kept practicing and trying his best to adapt his game to please his coach and have a chance, but what did he found? His minutes decreased by 1/3 on his second season.

And then during his 3rd season, after spending all the summer practicing to improve his weak spots, his coach benches him.

He has made all kind of sacrifices to please Nate, he’s playing the opposite of his style, losing money and being away of his family and girlfriend just to find disrespect.

He’s just 22, but the way I see it, he’s wasted 3 very valuable years of his carreer trying to please someone who can’t appreciate his gifts.

I think he still has it in him, he’s putted all his effort on the Blazers, and he deserves what’s best for him.

He can still do things like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qKGWhHADlE#t=3m59s

Either KP did a mistake drafting him or Nate as a coach, and I’d say it’s the last one.

I’d love KP to do something for him, he deserves it, and now it’s the moment to do it. It’s very hard for a player getting signed as a FA after 4 seasons of barely playing, just give him a chance, here or anywhere else, the kid deserves it, he’s served well the Blazers, and he deserves a chance.

Free Sergio

Power Forward is the position where an international free agent could fit better because whoever comes is expected to come off the bench, and probably won't have a lot of playing time, so picking up some guy who can bang and provide some intensity off the bench for a fair price could be a great move.

These are the Power Forwards who are ready to contribute

Felipe Reyes, A.K.A. Gladiator, 29, 6'9", Real Madrid

ACB Stats: 28min, 16.3pt, 54.9 2pt%, 71.7 ft%, 9.4Reb (3.8Off), 1.8As, 1.3St, 0.3Bk

ACB's regular season MVP is a well established star in Europe who's never had much consideration for NBA. He's an important member of the spanish national team, with a World Championship and an Olympic silver medal, and he proves his toughness on a daily basis. Despite his size, he's a great rebounder, specially on the offensive end. He doesn't have as many offensive moves as Scola, but he's tougher and a better rebounder, and creates many of his points off his amazing offensive rebounding ability.

Way to get him: Signing him. A 3Mill/year 3 year deal, with (at least) another spanish player on the roster and the challenge of playing on the NBA could work. Also Rudy will spend the summer with him playing with the national team, he could talk him into signing.

Euroleague mix

Fran Vazquez, 26, 6'10", FC Barcelona

ACB Stats: 22min, 12pt, 70.6 2pt%, 76.9ft%, 6.6reb (2.3Off), 0.7As, 1st, 1.6bk

31.9PER, ACB's 1st in fg%, 4th in boards, 1st in bk/48min. ¿Anything else?

Way to get him: Good news and bad news. The bad ones: Orlando Magic still hold his rights, so a trade is needed. The good ones: as a 1st round pick he'd have a rookie scale salary of about 2Mill.

ACB Mix

Marcus Haislip, 28, 6'10", Unicaja Malaga

ACB Stats: 28min, 16.5pt, 55.4 2pt%, 41.9 3pt%, 83.5 ft%, 5.2reb (1.3Off), 0.5as, 0.8st, 1.1bk.

Former lottery pick who was cutted after two years by the Bucks. Still the same athletic guy, but with a brand new offensive repertoire. It took him long to develop, but he's ready now. Reminds me of Antoine Walker.

Way to get him: After the Bucks not picking their option he signed for a season with Indiana, and now he's a free agent, so a nice offer should be enough.

Fan mix of ACB games

Yiannis Bouroussis, 25, 6'11", Olympiakos

Combined Greece & Euroleague stats: 21min, 12pt, 65 2pt%, 33.3 3pt%, 69.3ft%, 7.2reb (2.2Off), 0.8as, 0.6st, 0.7bk

He's been flirting with the idea of playing on the NBA for a couple of years now. He still has margin to improve. Okur/Troy Murphy kind of big.

Way to get him: He's a free agent and he wants to get to the NBA. 2-3Mill/Year should be enough.

vs Cibona (with Childress's afro sights)

There are other players who could be useful, such as Tiago Splitter, who does everything excepth shooting, but his rights are held by San Antonio, Henk Norel, who some people say is the next Pau Gasol, but still has a lot to improve (draft elegible, a good late 2nd to let develop in Europe), and Milan Macvan, a crafty 6'9" PF/C who is expected to be around the first half of the second round.

More ideas?

I'm going to start a series on international players who could help this team. I'll write about some elite players playing in Europe. There are some known faces, some young talent and some players who are among the best in Europe and could make an instant impact in the NBA.

We have cap space, draft picks, the MLE, and if I'm not mistaken the Biannual too, and that is a lot of room to add new players.

I'm focusing mainly in what's widely supposed to be the Blazers interest (PG,SF,PF).

Part I: Small Forwards

- Ersan Ilyasova, 21, FC Barcelona. 6'10"
(Stats are ACB and Euroleague combined)
22min, 10.6points, .511 2pt%, .439 3pt%, .763 ft%, 2.31OffR, 5.06DefR, 7.37TotR, .74As, .8St, 0.44Blk, 1.52TO

2005-07 - He played for the Bucks and he proved he's a good defender and an excellent rebounder thanks to his huge wingspan, but he wasn't ready for the NBA.
After spending the last couple of seasons playing ACB & Euroleague with one of the top teams in Europe he's proven he's matured a lot, and this last season would have been his senior college year.
He's played everything from SG to PF in Barcelona with great success, getting to the ACB finals last season, with a 15-pt 17-board game in semis to help them get there, and he's been in this year's Euroleague final four.

Way to get him: Bucks still hold his rights, a trade is needed, but picks or rights to other players could be enough.

Euroleague's October Player of the Month 

- Victor Claver, 20, Pamesa Valencia. 6'9"

(Just his ACB stats, he barely played in the Eurocup due to injury)
23min, 8.25ppg, .65 2pt%, .40 3pt%, .69 ft%, 0.9OffR, 3.6DefR, 4.5TotR, 0.6As, 1.1St, 0.5Blk, 1.2TO

He's been widely known as the best SF prospect from Europe in his generation (over Nic Batum) for the last years. He even was 1 of the 3 players invited to the spanish national team pre-Olympic camp, and he would have made the team if Garbajosa hadn't recovered on schedule.
He was really scary for the first eleven games of the season until he had a serious injury on his left leg.
Good defender, can play the 4 if needed, 40% from three and great slasher.

Right now is a long, fast SF, but he has a nice body, and he could bulk up to become a great offensive PF. Think a Kirilenko with less steals and assists, but much better offensively

Way to get him: Draft. After his injury he fell a lot on the draft boards, if he really falls to the second round he'd be a steal.

Last year's pre-draft workout with the Blazers

More ideas? Any thoughts?

-------------------------------------------------------------

Edit: Norsktroll brought up Omri Casspi:

Omri Casspi, Israel, plays for strong team Maccabi Tel Aviv, 20. I always liked him, and have seen him play good even against Luol Deng in international competition. Had a better PER in international games than Nicolas Batum, but the Blazers have seen them play against each other so it might be that they just decided Nic is the better pick.

Video Mix

Stats (only Euroleague as Israel's league consists of Maccabi steamrolling every other team)
17.2min, 8.8ppg, .518 2p%, .450 3p%, .771 ft%, 1.1OffR, 2.1DefR, 3.1TotR, 0.4As, 0.2Blk, 0.8St, 1.1TO

Most of his best games were against some of the best teams in the Euroleague and with limited court time.

I'm writing this while I'm waiting for the last game of regular season to begin.

Do you think Blazermania just applies to Rip City?
The game starts at 4:30AM here in Spain, and some of us spanish fans are going to stay overnight to watch the game, and I thought about making this thread about stuff that can make us feel tighter despite where in the world we are.

So I have two questions:

People around the world, What makes you feel closer to Portland and the Blazers?

And people from Oregon, What makes you feel closer to the foreign fans?

I'll start myself:
One of my favorite bands of all time are Paul Revere & the Raiders, who despite being from Idaho established themselves on Oregon (singer Mark Lindsay was born in Eugene), and they were inducted two years ago into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Revere_%26_the_Raiders
Listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH0kuLQgL04

But also the fact that the first spanish NBA player was a Blazer helps :)
Fernando Martín was a basketball Trailblazer for spanish fans, he proved that spanish guys could play among the best players, which started the first basketball boom in Spain in the eighties.

And for Portland Blazermaniacs, here's a nice fact that'll help you understand Rudy's fans from Badalona:
Despite that his homecourt when he played here was first used by Clyde Drexler on the Barcelona Olympics back in 1992 (which is quite cool, the rims where he used to practice his dunks were already touched by Clyde's hands)
Rudy was born in Mallorca, but his parents were from Badalona, and you have to understand Badalona's basketball culture to understand his tears when he left Joventut to join the Blazers.
Badalona is probably one of the most involved with basketball cities in the world (another tie with Portland), in a country where soccer gets about 80% of the sports media attention, Joventut has a lot of teams of kids starting from 6 years old, nobody cares about other sports, and is the home of some of the most famous spanish basketball players, a big part of the spanish national team (7 players from Catalonia, 4 out of Joventut's youth teams) and some NBA talent (Rudy, Raul López and soon Ricky Rubio).
Also, the team makes a great social impact, as its youth teams are a motivation for kids. I will never forget when I went to a two-week camp with some of the players when I was 8, and even today, half of the senior team players come from the youth teams, which encourages young kids to keep working hard and loving basketball, because they have a real chance to become pros. Joventut gives scolarships and free housing to kids outside Badalona who join the youth teams and have strict rules about their studies.
Unlike most important european teams, Joventut isn't owned by a billionaire or a deep-pocketed soccer team, it has a lot of small owners and its permanently open for new small investors and funded with ticket sales, tv deals and some help from local governments.
Wouldn't you love a team like that?
That's why we're so proud of Rudy, because his success is the success of a system that encourages kids to get to the next level without forgetting where they come from.

I hope you can understand better now why we love Rudy so much over here :)

I'd love to hear your stories!!

http://www.marca.com/2009/03/10/baloncesto/nba/1236673930.html

Published in the spanish press 3 hours after the game

Translated and edited:

Sergio, from the hospital: "Rudy got scared because he couldn't breathe well, but he's fine"

"I was shocked, you don't know how to react" - Rudy is asleep and he hurts on his side and neck - He's expected to be out tomorrow

"It was a weird moment. It was a blowout, we were all playing well... In some way you could imagine that Ariza was going to hit him because they had turned it over a few times in a row... He tried to hit him, but not to hurt him. I even think that Ariza reacts violently after that because he's scared about what he's done". A few meters away from Rose Garden, from the hospital, Sergio Rodriguez answers Marca.com- Rudy Fernández is already sleeping and Sergio, with some of Rudy's friend are still there.

"I was shocked. You just don't know how to react", says Sergio, whose first instinct was to get on the court, but was stopped by Monty Williams, he stops him and he has to stay on the bench. "I don't know what I would've done if they let me go", he confesses, and the fact is that in that moment there were two focuses: Rudy on the floor and the skirmish that was going on.

"There's a big show until he's taken out, he's on the floor, you can't get close... That makes it look worse than it is".

Teammates prayers
In that chaos, Sergio and Rudy's teammates started praying. In that moment you could see Sergio was visibly affected, looking where his friend was. "It's been strange. Everybody was praying and I was looking the other way". (Note: People in Spain aren't so religious and no one prays in public)

Just a scary moment
Luckily, the hospital is really close to the Rose Garden and Rudy could stay calm. "He was scared because he couldn't breathe well, but it's nothing. He hurts on his side and neck. He'll spend tonight in the hospital, but he's expected to leave tomorrow", he calms the fans, the same way he's done all night with Rudy's family.

Continue reading this post »

Hello everybody!

I'm another spanish blazer fan.

I'm an NBA fan since I was a kid, and don't hate me but I was a L*ker fan, it's not my fault, I was raised with the showtime.

Anyway, I've been watching Blazers games since Sergio arrived in Portland, and now I'm officially a Blazer Fan , as much as I'm a Rudy fan, and he's simply my favorite player.

After the introduction I'm going to try to explain the main differences you will notice when european fans post here, things that we see as normal and things that seem weird to us, so you can better understand us.

1. Brains and skill vs Physical tools

We, the people who usually watch european basketball are used to players who rely more on their brains and skill rather than big, strong bodies. You should already know just by taking a look at most european imports, our bigs usually are avobe average shooters, fast and most of them very skilled perimeter-oriented players who usually lack some toughness on defense (see Okur, Biedrins, Gasol, Stojakovic...) and our guards and wing players are usually fast skinny guys with above average passing skills and good at creating offense who usually have different ways of defending as they are more used to team defense, gambling for steals (which isn't usually seen as a good skill, but I see it just as a different way, putting much more pressure on the ball handler when not on a iso play). I don't know if there is a way to check it, but I'm pretty sure that european players average more assists than most of the players at their positions and they also draw more charges.

2. Coaching (psychology and team concept)

European coaches usually take a different aproach to the game, imagine Gregg Popovich (even his name sounds like he's from Serbia) during the last five minutes of the last game of a playoff series. Got it? So now you know how european coaches work. Looking for mismatches, trying to take defenders out of position, lots of picks everywhere, trying to change the pace of the game every now and then so they make the other team uncomfortable. It's more of a chess game where every piece is involved. Of course some players get more shots than others, but the difference isn't that big.

Also, the fact that most players play between 10 and 30 minutes forces players to stay 100% focused and ready to get on the court while they are rested. There are no sacred cows, if someone has a bad day he won't stay for long on the court, and this makes everybody feel valuable to the team, and they know that if they play well they'll stay on the court until they can't keep it at a 100%. This also makes the team more unpredictable, everyone can start and schemes change continuosly. European teams don't use much pick'n'rolls.

And by the way this makes much sense to the Blazers given their deep.

3. Positions

In europe we usually look at a team as PG-Wings-Inside players instead of Guards-Forwards-Center. We look at point guards more as facilitators of the offense, their duties are more focused to controlling the pace of the offense, involve everybody so all the team stays focused and alert, everybody is looking for chances of scoring because they know they'll get their chances to score if they beat their defenders. That's why most european guards are usually more offensive-minded. Sergio is a good example: He may be a defensive hole sometimes, but his team usually outscores the opposing team when he's on the floor.

We're really open-minded for lineups (I've seen Pau Gasol playing some PG in Spain).

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I hope after reading this you can understand some statement from eurofans that may sound weird for american fans

So don't get mad if someone says Roy shouldn't play more tan 30 minutes, because he will probably mean that Nate should rotate more in order to get everyone involved and ready to contribute at any moment.

Don't go crazy when someone says a star should come off the bench because he won't mean to disrespect him, but to give a great spark after a few minutes of play.

And don't bash eurofans who say that Sergio-Rudy-Batum(or Martell)-Travis-LaMarcus is the best Blazer lineup, because he'll probably mean that is the lineup that makes the biggest difference during a game.