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The ‘Genius of Sibenik’ is what some called Drazen Petrovic.

Others referred to him as the ‘Mozart of Basketball’ or simply as ‘Amadeus’.

There will never been another like the Croatian legend.

A player who blossomed into Europe’s most famous guard in the 1980s, Petrovic would have been 47 on October 22.

At the peak of his career in the summer of 1993, though, when Petrovic was an NBA player and less than a year on from his silver-medal winning contributions at 1992 Olympics for Croatia, Petrovic died in a car crash.

He was only 29.

Petrovic had accomplished so much already that he will forever be remembered as one of the best players ever in Europe.

He took his first steps in the game with Sibenik and played there until 1984 before going to Cibona Zagreb (1984-88), Real Madrid (1988-89), the Portland Trail Blazers (1989-90, and first half of 1990-91 season) and the New Jersey Nets.

Petrovic had his NBA success with the Nets, whom he joined midway through the 1990-91 campaign and played for through the 1992-93 season.

When it came to the NBA, he was a pioneer.

Top players from the old continent had yet to establish themselves in the league when he moved to America.

Petrovic, an All-NBA Third Team selection in 1993, blazed a trail for other Europeans to follow.

“If l learned anything in the NBA, then l learned to hold my own,” Petrovic once said. “No one’s going to push me around. I have a first and a last name, I’m not just some passer-by. I know that some people don’t like this, but they have to understand, no matter how miserable it makes them. There’s room for Europeans, and not only in episodic roles.”

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Asvel Basket, a French basketball club, says that New York Knicks center and French patriot Ronny Turiaf will play for the team during the NBA lockout.

Turiaf join fellow Frenchman Tony Parker, who is a part owner of Asvel and also has agreed to play for the club during the lockout.

Turiaf told Asvel’s website on Monday that he plans to arrive in France on tomorrow and begin practicing with the club this weekend.

Turiaf says he has recovered from a left hand injury that kept him out of this summer’s Eurobasket – the European Championships of basketball, where France lost to Spain in the finals.

Lithuanian center Zydrunas Ilgauskas will retire from the NBA after 13 seasons in the league.

Discuss Zydrunas Ilgauskas career in our forum.

Over his career, Ilgauskas played with just two teams – playing 12 seasons with the Cleveland Cavs and his final season with the Miami Heat – following LeBron James to Florida.  Big Z played in two NBA all-star games and had career averages of 13 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 1.6 blocks.

 

The Jordanian National team – known popularly as Al Nashama – showed enough character, courage, conviction and most importantly capabilities to live true to its nickname and carved out a 75-61 win against Philippines that put the WABA team in its first ever FIBA Asia Championship final.

Discuss the Asian Championships in our forum.

“This is the biggest moment of my life,” gushed Rasheim Wright, a catalyst for Jordan’s success in the last couple of years, who led the team’s scoring for the night with a 22-point game.

Sam Daghles and Zaid Abbas, as popular among the Chinese fans as they would be in Amman, exploded into cracker performance in the fourth quarter to take the game away completely from a Filipino outfit that looked far from the enthusiastic combination they had been in the tournament so far.

Simply out, Jordan had just outwitted, outsmarted, outplayed and outscored the Philippines.

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Discuss the most valuable, disappointing players in Eurobasket 2011

Juan Carlos Navarro led Spain to back-to-back EuroBasket titles, scoring 27 points on a night when four of his team-mates joined him in double figures as they knocked over France 98-85.

As he has done throughout the tournament, Navarro once more led Spain to glory but perhaps the bigger story was the support he received compared to French star Tony Parker.

The San Antonio Spurs guard finished the night as France’s top scorer with 26 points but, with two of his three team-mates who also scored in double-digits – Joakim Noah and Nicolas Batum – allowing themselves to get in foul trouble early in a heated affair, it turned out to be long night at the office for France as they failed in their bid to win their first-ever EuroBasket gold medal.

With the two teams trading even blows over the opening 10 minutes, it was in the second quarter that the game really began to heat up as Serge Ibaka announced his arrival in the game in style and Rudy Fernandez earned himself the wrath of the French nation.

Going unnoticed in three minutes of playing time in the opening quarter, Ibaka roared to life in the first five minutes of the second frame, swatting five shots and scoring four points to see his side out to a 40-31 lead.

But with a minute and a half to play before halftime, Fernandez unintentionally provided the spark France needed as they trailed by 12 points.

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Serenaded jubilantly by their countrymen after a 80-75 gold medal victory over Brazil, Argentina’s national basketball team added another chapter in a story I haven’t the skill or depth of words to write.

But Argentina’s fascinating rise to basketball prominence is a story that should be told. One that would be best narrated in their own words, documented and enshrined in Springfield at their Hall of Fame induction speech.

Anything less for one of history’s greatest basketball teams would be unbecoming.

The 2011 FIBA Tournament of the Americas (forum), minus the United States, was as much a tribute to Argentina’s “Golden Generation” as it was an Olympic qualifying tournament. The core of Manu Ginobili, Luis Scola, Carlos Delfino, Andres Nocioni, Fabricio Oberto, and head coach Ruben Magnano—now with Brazil—burst on the international scene at the 2002 World Championships seemingly from nowhere, shocking the United States and finishing with a silver medal.

Sunday night’s championship marked another medal in a decade-long run of excellence, but it also signaled the beginning of its end.

In victory, against a watered down field that featured no United States, a depleted Brazil, and a streaky Puerto Rico team, victory was almost assured. But it hardly came easy. There were times, playing consecutive nights on aging legs, that Argentina looked old.

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