Welcome to Das Basketball Blog (lit. “The Basketball Blog”) from the home office in Budapest, Hungary! On these ‘pages, i hope to bring you news, information, and rants – mostly rants, actually; c’mon, y’all know how this blogging thing goes – on all things basketball, with the tilt toward European and international.

For a warmup, an informal manifesto if you will.

(Any rebroadcast, retransmission or other duplication of this blog and/or its witticisms without the express written consent of Das Basketball Blog and ProBasketballNews.com – dependent of course on the editorial board actually running this thing – is very naughty. Management reserves the right to addend, amend and if necessary deny any of the statement made in this manifesto. Void where prohibited.)

Support for development of NBA-related basketball in Europe is supported by Das Basketball Blog – particularly in the unlikely event it serves as a type of minor league, which the NBA sorely needs.

Das Basketball Blog is utterly opposed to NBA franchises based in Europe, draw be damned. Heck, the Concorde was put in mothballs back in 2003, and it says here that New York to London alone is six hours. Imagine Berlin to Los Angeles. Alternatively, imagine two-month homestands followed by three-month road trips…Nah.

In terms of level of competition, no international tournament yet compares. But that gap decreases continually. Someday, Das Basketball Blog believes, we may have a proper World Cup of Basketball

Toni Kukoc of Croatia is one of the most underrated players of all-time, and he’s got three rings to prove it. The first great player to come out of the top four or five basketball-maddest countries in the world, Kukoc was an essential element on Those Great Chicago Bulls Teams. Continued best of luck to Toni in his efforts in “the best game ever invented.”

Arvydas Sabonis is one of the top five centers in the Stern Era. (Oh, all right: The others are, in no particular order, Tim Duncan, Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson and not Patrick Ewing. Note, too, that Sabonis was the only center ever to be capable of beating Shaq at his own game of slug-it-out-under-the-basket.)

Speaking of centers, a reference to Vlade Divac is always welcome. Better still: a YouTube video link.

Most European pro leagues are certainly on an equal level with NCAA Division I ball in terms of talent and are well beyond the college boys in polish and refinement.

And the main reason why Americans don’t realize this and aren’t privy to top hoops from the Continent (um, speaking of tournaments, they’re down to eight teams in a heck of a shootout in the silver anniversary of Euroleague b-ball) is down to ESPN, a.k.a. the CNN Of The Sportsworld And That Isn’t A Compliment.

Thus will said mega-channel be referred to in Das Basketball Blog as The Worldwide Leader in [American] Sports.

I mean, come on, they used to show LeBron James’ freaking St. Vincent-St. Mary games. Give me an FC Barcelona vs. CSKA Moscow semi-final any day.

Das Basketball Blog intends to find out why certain Eastern European cultures, i.e. Lithuania, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia are so basketball crazy. (Any insights, opinions, history, or feedback on the phenomenon would be well appreciated; email DBB c/o ProBasketballNews.com.)

Six words: We still miss you, Drazen Petrovic.