Back British Basketball

HOOPSFIX EDITOR LAUNCHES OLYMPIC (2012) CAMPAIGN TO PROMOTE BRITISH BASKETBALL

Sam Neter, editor of Hoopsfix.com and fellow basketball fanatic, has officially launched  'Back British Basketball' a blog-site which is the start of an integrated campaign to promote the Great Britain national basketball team (Team GB) and get people in the UK interested and following the team.

Basketball is one of the few sports in the Olympics where the home nation doesn’t get an automatic qualification. FIBA President Bob Elphinston in April 2010 announced that in order for Team GB to secure a place in the Olympics they would need to qualify for Eurobasket 2011, a campaign that begins with their scheduled games this coming August.

The campaign which includes online, some experiential marketing, merchandise and advertising will be seeded out across social media sites including Facebook and Twitter. The site will prompt people to show their support through purchasing branded T-Shirts, downloading banners, twibbons, website badges, desktop wallpapers and other merchandise. Fans will be able to submit photos, videos and comments fuelling the content on the site.

Sam Neter, Editor: Hoopsfix http://www.hoopsfix.com/  

‘The fact that Team GB has met and exceeded every goal FIBA has set out for them so far; yet they still don’t have a guaranteed place in 2012 is outrageous particularly given the fact that the UK is the host nation. As a committed fan I intend to drive this campaign and do everything in my power to get the nation on board and increase Team GB’s following ensuring their every chance of success in August’

HYPE BBall fully endorses Back British Basketball and hopes that it will have some effect on the quality of the game and the quality of supporters in the UK just imagine pubs across the nation watching GB Basketball in the EuroBasket 2011 tournament much like people filled pubs to watch England in its World Cup hopes. Basketball is a rapidly growing sport and we need to make sure team GB is at the forefront of that growth.   

Contact: Sam Neter, Sam@backbritishbasketball.com 07841591550

Rebranding of Behind the Back

ReBranding of the Behind the Back site

Hi everyone unfortunatly its come to a time where I have decided to rebrand behindtheback, this is due to a few reasons such as http://www.behindtheback.com/ already being a registered site as well as the lenght of the site most good sites in the USA are normally only a few letters such as http://www.scout.com/ and http://www.rivals.com/

The rebrand will bring us to out new site http://www.hypebball.com/ as we will be mainly focusing on young players and really trying to create some hype around British Basketball while also looking at Europe and the USA.

So I hope all you loyal readers follow me to my new site.

Thank you

Draft Prospect - Donatas Motiejunas

Vital stats
Position: Centre/Power Forward
Height: 7’0”/2.13m
Weight: 224 lbs/101 kg
Date of birth: 09/20/1990
Current Club: Benetton Treviso

Strengths: Donatas is a highly touted, talented centre coming out of Benetton Treviso (the same team that produced NBA draftees such as Toni Kukoc, Jorge Garbajosa and Andrea Bargnani) and is a shooting centre with range all the way out to the 3-point line and can hit it from almost anywhere, as well as this he has a good dribble-drive and can finish with either hand, resulting in him being exceptionally hard to guard.

Donatas has great agility and athleticism, and European Prospects’ take notes that “The combination of talent, size, coordination and skills is rare in European basketball,” i.e. as well as being a great outside threat, he can bring it inside and has a range of interior moves. His great court visibility and height mean that when double-teamed, he can easily spot the open man and hit him for the assist.

Read the rest at http://www.ballineurope.com/us-basketball/nba/draft-profile-donatas-motiejunas/

New York Knicks Made Mistake Picking Hill

In Junes 2009 NBA draft the New York Knicks picked up Jordan Hill, a 6ft 10" Power Forward from the University of Arizona. What they really neaded thought was an actual Point Guard who could run the team better then Chris Duhon and one that might help convince Lebron James to go to New York in the summer.

The 2009 Draft was guard heavy, and the Knicks had the 8th pick to pick one up, Brandon Jenning was still availible, Ty Lawson, Jrue Holiday, Darren Collison and Eric Maynor are just some of those that were also on the board when New York picked but still they decided to pick a PF.

Then after playing for New York for 24 games Jordan Hill was traded to Houston, Arizona, in part of the Tracy McGrady trade, luckily for him he now gets to play alongside ex-college team mate Chase Buddinger.... for the rest of the story go to - http://bleacherreport.com/articles/359045-knicks-made-mistake-picking-hill

Who Can Beat LA Come Play-Off Time?

When the season started the LA Lakers were supposed to be the un-disputed champions of the West especially after bringing in Ron Artest to replace Tevor Ariza and re-signing Lamar Odom.

However now the Dallas Mavericks have gone 9 straight games without a loss and are 9 and 1 in there last 10, only losing to the Oklahoma City Thunder the day after the trade deadline when Caron was new to the team and they were still building chemistry.

Now though Dallas are steam rolling towards the top stop in the West and have received a huge boost after beating the Lakers (without Kobe) in Dallas. If Dallas can continue this run long into the playoffs much like Golden State did back in 2007..... Read the full article at http://bleacherreport.com/articles/356410-who-can-beat-la-come-play-offs

My Free Agency Hopes For The Chicago Bulls

Summer 2010 - The biggest free agency period in the history of the NBA, with players such as Lebron, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, Joe Johnson, Ray Allen, Shaq, Dirk (eto), Paul Peirce (eto), Kobe (player option), David Lee the list goes on and on.......

New York will look to sign a player like Lebron and if they dont get him then its Chris Bosh, in general the Knicks will sign whoever they can get because if they dont the fan's will be looking for blood.

Boston will probably try to keep Paul Peirce and Ray Allen and then if they want to they may try to get someone to trade for Allen to get some more young bodies.

Dirk will stay in Dallas because its his team and they are still serious title contenders.

Everyone will try to get everyone, as a Bulls fan however I have one player that I hope will decide to sign for Chicago.........

For the rest of the article go to http://www.bleacherreport.com/articles/355637-my-free-agency-hopes-for-the-chicago-bulls

Chicago Bulls Playoff Hopes

The playoff hopes of the Chicago Bulls rest firmly on the shoulders of Derrick Rose, however for thus team to be competitive in the playoffs they need the bench and other starters just to step it up a notch.
Rookie power forward Taj Gibson has to continue his stellar play and grab rebounds while also bringing that youth and energy to the squad, Brad Miller who has played brilliantly as a back up centre to Joakim Noah has to continue to play well off the bench and score more inside resulting hopefully in fouls on opposing big men.
Starting shooting guard Kirk Hindrich played well in last years series with the Celtics but then he was a back up to Rose whereas thus year he will be starting and will need to continue to play well in crunch time.
Joakim Noah has to overcome injuries and give us a series much like last year but hopefully even better, Joakim brings hustle to the squad much like Kevin Garnett does for Boston.......

For the rest of the article visit - http://www.bleacherreport.com/articles/355223-chicago-bulls-play-off-hopes-rest-on-these-players

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod Touch

Team Profile - Solent Kestrels


The Solent Stars were founded in 1980 with a starting line up of Ken Walton, Trevor Denny, Marvin Johnson, J Robinson, Paul Philip and Jimmy Guymon, who later founded the Solent Stars youth programme for young kids (mainly his son Matt Guymon) in Southampton who had asspirations of playing in the USA. The club had been formed at the end of the previous season from two Southern League teams - Portsmouth Pirates and Southampton Sharks.

The Solent Stars were successful for many seasons and in the 80's and 90's had a few thousand as the average attendance (which in the UK for that time was very high) they were increasingly successful, winning three national cups and four play-off championships.



Despite this going into the new millenium the team was on a downward spiral and at the end of the 2000-2001 season finished second to bottom in the National Basketball League Confrence, with a record of 6 wins 15 losses Solent was lossing and lossing bad, they tried to make amends in 2001/2002 finishing the season in 3rd place behind Plymouth Raiders and Teeside Mohawks from there however the seasons got worse finishing from between 8th and 12th in the rest of the final years of the club, eventually finishing 8th in 2006/07 when the club finally folded after receiving minimal support.


The final closing of the Solent Stars was expected to end the Solent youth programme however they decided to break away from the Stars broke after the team started using the youth funds to pay for players and hall rental, this eventually leaded to the creation of the Solent Kestrels the current best youth team in Hampshire and possibly the South of England.....

Find the rest of the article at
http://www.ballineurope.com/countries/uk/club-profile-the-solent-kestrels/

Hasheem Thabeet Assigned to D-League

On Thursday 25th of February the Memphis Grizzlies assigned the number 2 overall pick from last years draft to the D-League after averaging 2.5 points, 2.9 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game in 50 games on an average of 10 minutes per game, in my mind that is a waste of a pick especially the 2nd player drafted last year, the Grizzlies have instead opted to play Hamid Haddadi from Iran showing just how little confidence the team has in Thabeet.
Last night Hasheem made his D-League Debut by playing just 17 minutes 51 seconds and scoring a very low 8 points while grabbing 2 rebounds and a block, However this guy is like 7ft 3'' he should be grabbing more rebounds than that. Thabeet is know for his defensive presence yet last night he also got 4 personal fouls and 2 turnovers while only blocking 1 shot not much of a defensive presence to me.
The thing that I find shocking is that most people who play in the D-League either were not drafted or were second rounds picks or maybe even low first round picks, not the 2nd player taken overall. To me I always felt that Thabeet should have stayed in college and developed his game a little better improved his offensive repertoire rather than declare but no Hasheem felt that the NBA was where he deserved to be plus a multimillion pound contract does that to you.
There are guys in the D-League who are better than this guy yet thanks to the Grizzlies need for a big he was the one selected if I was the Grizzlies GM I probably would have picked Dejuan Blair because I have more trust in his Non-Existent ACL's than I do in Thabeet developing an offensive game.

Suprises Since Trade Deadline

Since the trade deadline one team has made a serious surprise, Since trading away 2 of their former All-Stars (Caron Butler and Antwan Jamison) the Washington Wizards have won 3 and lost 2. Andray Blatche is averaging 24.8p.p.g in those 5 games, as well as 9.8 rebounds and 2.8assists, Al Thornton is averaging 16p.p.g and 6 rebounds, James Singleton is averaging 8.4 rebounds per contest and scoring 7.4 points, JaVale McGee is has started the last 5 games after starting the season as a bench player has gone to average 9.6 points and 5.4 rebounds, I could go on for another 10 lines but basically what I'm trying to say is that these guys are stepping up, they have not seen their all stars leave and decided to give up, they have continued to fight, they have committed to make this team better by using the youth which is available to run and play with energy, They have beaten teams like Denver the night after it beat the Cavs, they beat the Bulls who were on a 4 game winning streak, last night they lost by 5 to the Memphis Grizzlies a team that has proven scorers in Marc Gasol, Rudy Gay, Zach Randolph and OJ Mayo, a team who earlier this season were in playoff contention in a competitive Western Conference, The Wizards don't want to wait until the Draft to get a starting block to build the franchise around they don't want one of the free agents available this summer, they want the building block to be what they have now a team with young, dependable scorers who have the will power to make this team better each and every game.