When the Sacramento Kings meet the Memphis Grizzlies tonight, it will mark the first time an Israeli player faces a player from a rival Middle East Muslim nation in the NBA. NBA rookie Omri Casspi is from Israel and plays for the Sacremento Kings, while Iranian center Hamed Haddadi plays for the Memphis Grizzlies. Both [...]

The last couple of years has really been great for Hamed Haddadi, the 7-2 center from Iran. First Iran won the 2007 Asiabasket with Haddadi in the middle. It was Iran’s first ever medal in the tournament. The win qualified the Iranian basketball team to play in their first Olympic games in 60 years. Though [...]

With the recent successes of Iran, Jordan, and Lebanon, should FIBA create Middle East region? That’s currently what is being proposed in our forum (discuss). The proposal is to move four current European basketball nations, Israel, Turkey, Azerbijan, and Armenia, out from FIBA Europe and combine them with the three current Asian subregions – West [...]

Tianjin, China – The 2009 Asiabasket All-Tournament team was named yesterday amidst a little controversy over one of the selections. (edit: this was an unofficial selection from sports.cn – we apologize for the inconvenience) The team was led by Asia Championships MVP Hamed Haddadi of Iran, followed by Chinese veteran Wang Zhizhi, do-it-all Iranian swingman Samad [...]

Iran successfully defended their Asia Champions crown last night, dropping favored-China in a laughable 70-52 win. Led by Memphis Grizzly center Hamed Haddadi‘s 19 points and 17 rebounds, Iran dominated the Chinese in the first two quarters; outscoring their opponents by 11 in the first quarter and by six in the second. The Iranians took [...]

Yi Jianlian and Hamed Haddadi came up big for their respective national teams last night, propelling each squad to an unblemished 5-0 record in the 2009 Asia Basketaball Championships. With the two NBA big men leading their teams over Jordan and Korea, China and Iran are now the remaining teams without a loss. China to [...]

Two regional basketball championships are going into their third, and final day, of preliminary games today. The 2009 Africa Nations and the Asia Championships are finishing up their round robin play.After day 2, Angola, Nigeria, Senegal, and Cameroon have advanced into the quarterfinals of the 2009 Africa Nations Championships of Basketball The top three teams [...]