Gender Discrimination in European Sports

Coming from Europe and spending most of my time there Ever since the human beings started existing women are viewed as a weaker sex, that said, it means that they and their accomplishments in “men’s” areas, such as sport, will always be taken for granted. As long as the opinion of them being weaker sex lasts among people, everything they do in sports will not be recognized as it is when it comes to men’s competitions. I will be honest and start with myself; women sports do not attract me near as much as it does men sports. Speed, agility, physical strength, they all go in favor of men, that is what is important and what is wanted when it comes to sport. Now there is a question, is that fair? Does that mean women should stop playing sports and, as one of my good friends once said, “Stay in the kitchen, that’s where they belong”

Well, I will answer on these questions and say that first of all, it is absolutely not fair in what kind of the situation women are put in regarding the sports, and they can do much more than just be house wives as my friend describe them. Effort, will, passion, determination; they are all elements that are included in sport and what make sport the way it is now. All of these things women have as much as men, maybe even more, because all the physical indifference they have comparing with men they have to make up this way. If a person sees the stats in the research that is made comparing the genders, the numbers almost seem unreal how much women are put aside when it comes to sports. Even though approximately 40% of all sport participants in sport and any physical activity are women, the way they are treated would never show how much they are involved in sports. Starting with unequal wages where men make multiple times bigger money than women, through media coverage when only 6% to 8% of all sport coverage in sports are women’s, to the women-only stories in newspapers total only 3.5% while men-only stories go up to over 90% in all the magazines and newspapers

Trying to equalize women rights in sport, comities and federations in Europe have made clear that they do not support the fact that women are treated the way they are. They want more equal right for women, and that is why now we can see more women’s sports added into the Olympic Games schedule, we can see sponsors awarding best females athletes with close to equal contract deals as they do man, as well as first place awards are becoming larger for women than ever before, particularly in tennis where a first place at the tournament is the same for both males and females.

So things are slowly but surely improving for women regarding their place in sport, but now there is a question; when are people going to adapt and follow female sport more, and when are they going to get rid of the opinion that women are made just to spend time in the kitchen? Well, I cannot answer on those questions, but I definitely know that before people stop thinking this way, there is not going to be 100% equality between men and women in sports.

The top 10 performances of women's sports in the last 30 years

link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yogNyAgV-5M

Rise of Russia as the European Basketball Power

At the moment, Russian men’s basketball is ranked as a team sport # 3 in popularity, after soccer and ice hockey. Russian National basketball team won gold medals at European Basketball Championship in 2007, bronze medals in 1997 and 2011. They also won silver medals at World Basketball Championship in 1998. As a part of the Soviet Union team, Russian athletes won men’s basketball Olympic tournament twice (1972 and 1988).

Professional basketball club system is huge. The major league of Russian basketball is called PBL, which means Professional Basketball League. Currently, 10 teams are participating in it. Because all 10 teams also participate in different European competitions. PBL regular season consists of 18 games for each team. 8 best teams then play in post-season playoffs. CSKA (Moscow) is the biggest team in the league. In last 20 seasons they won 18 titles.

 In my opinion this basketball nation is one of the biggest in Europe together with countries like Spain, Serbia, France and Lithuania. Last year their basketball federation announced the new project that has a goal to make Russia the biggest European basketball force in entire Europe.

They created "The Second Division of Russian Basketball"  called  “Super League”. This minor league currently consists of 9 teams. The Third Division of Russian Basketball is called MBL. It currently consists of 17 teams. 8 teams compete in South Conference, and 9 teams compete in North conference. Thus, in whole professional basketball in Russia there are 36 teams, which really is not too many.    

With all these lower leagues they can imporve their young afirmate their young players and save lots of money to invest in some other projects and think with this strategy they will be always one step ahead other European countries.

Curently Russia is  coordinating with all basketball clubs in inside the country. In the nearest future their International Department should cover the whole region as well-former Soviet Union from which they are getting lots of quality players to play for their best clubs. Also they will need to pay more attention on bringing American players in the last five years they Russian proffessionall teams spent over $150 million on bringing these payers and their teams won the Euroleague only once, so I think they should cut their budget for bringing these players and in stead of that they should focus on working with the young talents that they have a lot.

The biggest weakness is the small capacity of our gymnasium. If they want to achieve their goal of vecoming the best basketball nation in Europe they will need to invest more money in building brand new arenas because the demand for this sport is rising very quickly and people are hungry for being able to enjoy and support their favorite players live.

In my opinion if they really finish all these things that they promised they have a great chance not just to compete with European countries than also to compete with even some NBA teams that play every year the Summer league against the best European clubs. At the end enjoy in this video.

link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZcTpw13oUo

  

How Steroids Make the Sport World Unequal

Most of you don’t even know how Milovan Rakovic is and how he became the Euroleague MVP and the second round pick on NBA Draft just few years ago? Do you know how he achieved that? In his desiring to become a super athlete

, she started to use some illegal substances which improved his ability to jump, posting, boxing up and run fast like nobody before him had. After this

discovery many of athletes started to use these substances, today known as steroids. Some of them achieved their goals, some of them were exposed, but some of them died using these powerful but in the same time fatal sub

stances for their lives. Steroids shouldn’t be used in sports.

My goal of writing this blog is to inform people how that became the normal part not just of European Basketball, but the part of almost all other sports all around the world. Today some athletes will do anything to become famous like Milovan Rakovic even if that is harmf

ul for them. Why cheaters are today’s idols of some people? They shouldn’t be. Can you think about a feeling when you find out that your "idols" that were making you happy with their great skills, actually cheated? They did not cheat just themselves, they also cheated the people that believed in them, including their nations. Today in Serbia where is Milovan Rakovic from almost all true basketball fans are embarrassed of what he did not just to himself, but also

to his own country and basketball fans all around the world.

Today steroids are killing sports around the world and the question is “Why are people allowing this misdemeanor?” Why do some countries have privileges to sign a contract which doesn’t allow doping control of their athletes? When I say this I think of an American basketball team, known as “Dream Team”, and American swimmers. For me it is better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies. I know that for example “The Dream Team” is made of the best 12 NBA players who have 8 preseason, 84 regular season games plus 32 possible playoff games, I know how tired they are after every season, but why they have a privilege over European basketball players who have almost same amounts of games every single year. In my opinion if let this team no to get tested before the Olympics will send wrong message to other athletes who will probably think that there is a whole in this system and that will encourage them to start using steroids in order to achieve success that Dream Team achieved in the past.

If we continue to fight against this crime we will have a chance to give everyone chances to compete with others on a fair way, how they all deserve. Sports could be more interesting and more exciting for everybody. We would enjoy watching every game, knowing that everyone is competing on a fair plain, where there are no circumstances in which any player can try to illegally make himself or herself better than his or her fellow competitors.

Introduction to Violence in the NBA vs International

Violence has been a big part of sport for a long time. There are literally no sport events in which you do not see any violence. When we think of violence we automatically think of fighting, but there are actually many types of violence. Besides physical violence, there is also verbal violence and racial violence and in sports there can be violence between players, fans, teams etc. the research says that three most violent sports in the world are football, hockey and soccer, but violence can be found in any other sport such as basketball and baseball.

There are many violent events in sports that are pretty known to people. Some of them and the once that I am going to talk about are those with soccer stars who played in the World Cup in 2006 when French Zinedin Zidan headbutted Italian player Marco Materazzi. The reason why this happened is because Materazzi said something bad about Zidan’s sister which triggered him to hit Materazzi. This event has been seen by not just millions but billions of people throughout the world. When it happened it was a very big deal, because it completely influenced the game. France was attacking, had more opportunities for the goal, Zidan just had a great shot but Bufon, Italian goalkeeper somehow saved it. And in that 110 minute of the game in the second overtime this thing happened. Maybe it wouldn’t of a great deal if this wasn’t the World Cup finals, and whoever wins the game was going to become a world champion. Well at the end Italy came out as a winner after penalty kicking, but everybody is asking themselves what would had happened if Zidan didn’t get kicked off the game. News and newspapers were full of stories what exactly happened, what did Materazzi tell Zidan, who is a very calm guy, to make him that mad. That went over for months, until it wasn’t revealed a few months later. This game was by the way the last game ever Zidan played for the French national team, and it just went wrong, all because of the verbal violence that Materazzi had towards Zidan, which caused Zidan to physically violate Matterazzi.

The other pretty famous physical fight that took place was in the NBA game between Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons in November of 2004. This fight was so bad that it shook the whole NBA world and everybody who watches NBA at least a little big. After the fight commissioner of the NBA suspended nine players for all combined 144 games, out of which Indiana players got the most punishment. Ron Artest ended up being suspended for the rest of the year or 73 games at that point, Stephen Jackson got 30 games of suspension and Jermaine O’Neal was suspended for 25 games. In the chart below you can also see how it affected their salary, where most of the players lost significant money because of this fight.

Player	Games	Season salary	Salary lost
Ron Artest	73	$6,158,000	$4,995,000
Stephen Jackson	30	$5,100,000	$1,700,000
Jermaine O’Neal	25	$14,800,000	$4,111,000
Ben Wallace	6	$6,000,000	$400,000
Anthony Johnson	5	$2,200,000	$122,222
Reggie Miller	1	$5,500,000	$61,111
Chauncey Billups	1	$5,455,000	$60,611
Derrick Coleman	1	$4,500,000	$50,000
Elden Campbell	1	$4,400,000	$48,888

The fight started less than a minute left where Indiana was leading by 15 points in Detroit’s arena. Ben Wallace was fouled pretty hard by Ron Artest, and frustrated enough because of the losing at the home court Wallace just Pushed Artest pretty hard. The fight between the teams started, but what will eventually happen nobody predicted. After the things calmed down a little bit one of the fans hit Artest with the cup full of drink, that triggered Artest and he got up and started fighting with the fans, Jackson and O’Neal joined him and three of them had hit a good number of fans. This moment is still being talked about and I am pretty sure that almost every single NBA is remembering this fight, because this was the kind of violence that set new standards in sports.

So as I said, violence will most likely exist as long as sports do and no matter where the U.S. or Europe, it is just the matter how are we going to react on the challenge when somebody else verbally assaults you, are you going physically to violet them or you are just going to let it go?

Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGFVhzmnYWg

Basketball Basis of the European Basketball

In this blog I am going to try describing what are the basis of European style of basketball and how it deifiers from the NBA style.

First and the most important thing when it comes to European basketball players are their individual skills:

1.court vision: a player's ability to see everything on the court during play — such as where his teammates and defenders are set up — which enables him to make better choices in passing; the best point guards possess this.

2.crossover dribble

when a ball handler dribbles the ball across his body from one hand to the other.

3. downcourt or down the court:

the direction of a team on offense moves, from its backcourt into its front court and toward its own basket, the main difference from the NBA basketball is that European players use only 3 maximum 4 players in this type of move.

4. established position:

when a defensive player has both feet firmly planted on the floor before an offensive player who runs into such a defender is charging

4. zonal defense:

just 10 years ago zonal defense was illegal if any NBA team would perform this type of defense they would get the technical foul, in Europe this type of defense is very popular and lots of teams are using it as their main weapon, especially when they play against NBA teams during the Summer. The basis of this defense is keeping 3 players inside of paint and only 2 payers outside in order to prevent the three point shoot from the opposite team.

5. shooting:

most of European players that play in the strongest basketball league in the world NBA are mostly there to improve their team's three point shoot. European players put more emphasis on shooting rather on crossovers or their physicality like American players do. They also spend over 2 hours a day practicing only mid-range and three point shoots, which is very unusual for Americans. This is why the best shooters in the league are guys like Novitzky, Stojakovic, Galinari, Belineli, Nash and Ginobili.

link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAtLEBnibV0

6. the last, but at the same time the most important base of European basketball that are even NBA players using is move called Euro-step. That's the move when you are about to finish the layup and in the last moment you decide to change direction of your steps by moving your right foot to the left and your left foot to the right. The NBA player that is doing this move better than anyone is San Antonio Spurs super-star Manuel Ginobili. This is not surprise from this Argentinean, considering that he spent almost 4 years playing in Kinder Bologna-Italian team that was competing in the Euro League.

Besides these basis of basketball that i was just talking about there are hundreds of more, but the ones that I presented are the most significant and very helpful in order to learn something more about some different styles of this game.

Stolen Finals

In my last 3 blogs I was trying to introduce you with international basketball talking only about bright and positive things. I feel now is a time to show some bad things about this sport outside of the U.S. and at the same time to spread around this story because I feel people from the U.S. are not informed well about this topic and it also affect them because their basketball national team was also participating in this event that I am going to talk about.

One of the most discussed referees’ “mistakes” in sports in the past few years happened at the basketball world championship in Turkey in 2010. In the semifinal game between the host team Turkey and Serbian national team, there were four seconds left of the game, when one of the Turkish players stepped on the sideline, but the referees did not call anything allowing the Turkish national team player, Tunceri, score in the last second and bring the one-point victory to his team which make them advance to the final game against

the team USA.

People do make mistakes in life, but this one was very obvious that the referee who was right next to the play when Tunceri stepped on the line did not call out of bounce on purpose so the host team can make it to the finals. It was not just this one call that could have turned things around in the game, but also many other unfair calls that were given to the Turkish players in the second half. For a person such as me who was watching the game, it was clear that the host team was being pushed by the referees who did everything they could so Turkey can make the finals.

As this blog stated many clear fouls for the Turkish team were not called, and some very lame once were called against the Serbian players. This blog might be a little bit too offensive, but this is the way many people felt after watching that game, and I am not talking about Serbia fans, but anybody else who wants justice in sports.

One more ridiculous thing that happened regarding this game is the decision that FIBA (International Basketball Federation), just apologized to the Serbian national team after seeing the tape of the game, but they did not change anything about it. In my opinion now is too late because the players, buy the way they were the youngest team in that tournament with average age of 22 years, are still recovering from that undeserved loss and in my opinion form these kind of things it is just impossible to fully recover

This game is a great example of not being fair, and how referees were pushing one team to win the game. At the end I just hope that FIBA learned their lesson and that they are not going to make same mistake twice when it comes choosing the reefs that are very important part of this beautiful game.

Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6H9wKf0p8k

Europe vs United States :Basketball Development

What are the differences between the U.S. and European basketball developmental systems I as a European after spending almost 4 years at the United States I am able to compare these two systems and share my thoughts with all the people that follow this blog.

The main difference between these two systems is based on the competitiveness. In Europe kids are forced to play only for the clubs because the basketball

high-school is not developing that much. Usually

these kids are making their first basketball steps at age of 8 and starting to compete at age of 10 playing under the same rules as European professional players. This rule is the actual re

ason why in the last 10 years on the big competitions like Olympics and World

Basketball Championship Europe won more medals comparing to the U.S.. In the U.S. high-school players don't even use the shoot-clock where they are forced to play the slow basketball that doesn't have any similarity with the college or NBA basketball.

The other big thing is basketball camps. Every single European put big emphasis on their work with young talents who get a chance to travel around the Europe and get familiar lots of different basketball approaches and techniques. The only con about working with young kids is that most of them are obligated to sign per contracts at very young age and that doesn't allow them to have some other options like American kids have going to school and playing their sports with still chance to someday become professional players.

The only thing that make me confident that the U.S. is still the center of the basketball is the NBA, the strongest league in the world where even Europeans come to play and what is more important basketball is still a huge part of the American culture

Statistics are on the European side, but my whole point of analyzing these two systems was no to prove which system works better then to give advices for the both sides and try to make them learning from their mistakes and them by coming each other. Another thing is that I didn't mention and it can be very important is population and the size between these two continents. North America is almost three times bigger than Europe with two times more registered basketball players what automatically makes huge advantage for the American over European basketball system.

At the end both sides have lots of open spaces for improvement and what is more important they both are still rising the basketball standards all around the world and doing great job in promoting this sport, but if both of these two sides would work on the problems that I just mentioned they would be one step closer to perfection, one step because being perfect is impossible because no matter what you can always do better.

Manu Ginobili Returns to Court?

During the 2012 NBA lockout all the superstars are feeling physical effects. The team that felt it more than anyone in the league is definitely the San Antonio Spurs. Their starting guard Manu Ginobili, who suffered a broken hand last year, had recently reinjured the same hand just 2 weeks ago.

It seems that things are not going to get better for this very old team. Yesterday on his official Twitter page he announced that he expects to be back on the court at least by the second week of March. With such a timely return, he brought hope to a large fan base in doubt of him returning to action.

Fortunately even without Ginobili San Antonio Spurs have found a way to win, but they also know that without him 100 percent ready they won’t have any chance to compete for the NBA title. My personal opinion about him brings the intensity needed in order to spark the offense and keep San Antonio competitive and NBA title bound. He has always been injury prone, however his dedication and determination with rehab has led him back on the court and that’s why I strongly believe that he will continue his heroic play. As international basketball analyst I am convinced that he will return not better than ever, but good enough to help his team fighting for the championship. His experience is as a mentor on and off the court provides the Spurs a competitive advantage over every NBA team.

Ginobili is probably one of the most famous international NBA stars in the world. He also provides the spark for diehard fans everywhere. He is a valuable asset for the NBA and he will be missed once he retires. Although, I know he has a few more great seasons left in him and can’t wait to see how he ends his career because it will be exciting, extravagant, and extremely entertaining.

Link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9seQ2uvxrL8

Jeremy Lin Next Rising Superstar? Or Not?

The New York Knicks rising "superstar" Jeremy Lin doesn't stop to surprise basketball fans around the world with his ridiculous performances over the last 2 weeks putting all other NBA superstars away from all possible news or cover pages.

Even after seven consecutive victories, where he was leading his team without two main superstars Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire, the media is still stirring debate questioning is he the next franchise superstar of the New York Knicks, or just another one of a dozen talented rookies that Knicks drafted in the past few years and that did not last too long. Last week after watching Linsanity (his new nickname that fans gave him after his sensational performance against L.A. Lakers) playing, I got the impression that Harvard graduate already found his spot of the team leader on the court and always possible game-changer. In my opinion he showed to everyone his amazing potential, but I am still not sure if he is capable of performing like this every single night against all other NBA point guards who can't wait to swipe him away from the news and headlines from which he totally made all of them to quietly disappear. The only thing from my perspective about I am 100 percent sure is Jeremy's desire and hunger for a win, which allows me to believe that he is one step closer of becoming not just one of the best Knicks players in the last few very painful seasons, but the one of the best NBA players like Kobe Brayant, Dirk Nowitzki or Kevin Durant are today. On the other I think this basketball circus is already full of too many establish superstars so it's not realistic for some underrated kid from IV league who spent only two weeks of playing a professional basketball without any close recognition that other superstars managed to achieve over years building their carriers.

At the end it is not questionable Jeremy Lin is tremendous NBA prospect, but is he ready to take over this league? I guess the only way to find this out is to give him more time and after, the time will uncover his real face.