Iverson in Besiktas

Well, no news that he is there, but it was nice to see Allen Iverson play real basketball for a change and not the NBA style of play. He had a OK game 15p in 23minutes, but he is not in gameshape really, but he will be I hope.

I watched a little of the swedish womens league game between Solna and Norrkoping, but I became quickly bored af all the dribbling without anycause at all.
So went back to see most of Besiktas vs Hemofarm instead a game thart besiktas had in their backpack, but the coach made som really stupid changes and he kepted Iverson in the bench until like 5 minutes left of the game.
What happened was that they had a comfortable lead, when a of a sudden Hemofarm became on fire from beoynd the threepointline and whoops, they where back in the game and of course with a long 3pointer went up by 2points.
Lesson learned in basketball a 15p lead goes away very quickly, dont celabrate until the game is over. The coaches helped with strange changes and hesitated to change back.
Besiktas learned there lesson with a loss in this game, a very unecessery loss as I see it.

Went back to womens game and all of a sudden Norrkoping came back from 20points down to making it excitning again, but the players in Solna that should take their team on their shoulders did and Solna got the win.

There was a big win in Sweden for Norrkoping Dolphins mens team who beat Turk Telekom in Euro challenge.

Norrköping Dolphins - Turk Telekom 101-89
(41-21, 25-21, 18-20, 17-27)
Norrköping: George Gervin 16, Mikael Linduist 15, Oladapo Ayuba 14, Joakim Kjellbom 14, Tomas Gaidamavicius 12, Anton Saks 10, Polivas Sakinis 9, Joe Mcnaull 6, Andrew Mitchell 5.
Turk Telekom: Anthony Gaffney 24, Yunus Cankaya 23, Heiko Chaffartzik 11, K'zell Wesson 7, Mehmet Yagmur 6, Ceyhun Altay 6, Sani Becirovic 4, Gregory Stiemsma 4, Ümit Türkoglu 2, Adem Ören 2.
Publik: 1 803 (Stadium Arena)

I´m not surprised at all....

....that Sødertalje Kings are in the top of the Swedish league. They got 6-0 start of the season and if they can keep their players healthy the whole season, they will be a pain in the ass for everybody.

As headcoach Vedran Bosnic is doing his first season, but its one of many season on toplevels where he has had to work hard to succeed. He hade a long and good playing career and has played in many countries and for many different coaches, he is well prepaired. He used to work hard as a player, now its the same but as a coach.

He really has my respect, he knows the game and he is not a "babysitter" he`s a coach.

Most of the teams in the Swedish league dont have the budget as LF basket or Norrkøping got, but once you know that, you have a choice to make and some things to find out.

If we dont have the money, what can we do så we can compete with the rest of the teams with much bigger budgets and for Coach Bosnic, the answer is simply!

Practise hard and work harder than the rest.

I think its great since they show that its NOT ALL ABOUT THE MONEY, but sure it helps, but if you prepaire and practise hard you can always shake what shouldn`t be able to be shook.

The train has left the station

In Sweden the highest league is being divided into Norrkoping Dolphins and LF basket (former Plannja) and the rest of the league. All though LF basket has gone down in their budget their budget is still much bigger than the rest.

But for real the train has left and on it is Norrkoping and LF basket tries to follow. Norrkoping is playing european leagues not only with the mens team, but also with their wheelchair team I think thats great. The swedish federation also thinks thats great and have supported the club with at total of 10 000 euro for this season. The Swedish federation started doing this with clubs that set higher goals and play internationally which of course is very important for swedish basketball and its development.

Norrkopings built a new arena not to long ago and has dramatically increased their budget as a club from before the arena (770 000euro) to now last year (3,6 million euro). Thats a big change and their arena had a + result last year of 130 000 euro

(My numbers are just estimated from the article in swedish newspapper, they are not precise)
You can read the article here

They have swedens first arena for BASKETBALL, the building is built so it fits for basketballplayers with higher ceeling indoors and dressingsrooms and more built for basketball.

View of Stadium arena basketballcourt

This is connected to the arena also new

 
For next year they will go much, much more +in their budget and what they can use that money to do for Norrkoping and Swedish basketball will be incrediable.

The train has left the station will some other club get on the rails and try to follow for real or will swedish league be a one team league.
One team that only can loose if the players dont give a *blip* or half the team gets injured?