San Antonio Internationals

PARIS (George Eddy's International Show) - The last two weeks have been eventful as I was fortunate to commentate an incredible Euroleague Final Four in Istanbul.

All the games were full of suspense and excitement but the Final was beyond belief as the golden young Greek generation of players from Olympiakos put on the greatest comeback ever against CSKA Moscow's armada of expensive superstars. What a story!

The year that Olympiakos must reduce its budget by half is the year they break through to win their second Euroleague title thanks to the energy and intensity of a unexpected small ball line-up that fronts the bigs and pressures the passers the way Oklahoma City Thunder is doing it to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Dusan Ivkovic gave the young team confidence and superior tactics just like a legendary coach should.

With all the economic problems the country has been facing, this was at least one occasion for the Greek population to smile and be proud of its homegrown basketball players!

I am sure that Greg Popovich, with his Serbian background, was impressed by this incredible performance too. The genius of coaches like Ivkovic or Zeljko Obradovic is no secret to Pop, who has often sung the merits of international basketball.

His San Antonio team, like Dallas last season, is putting on a clinic during these surprising playoffs about how to use international players and styles of play at the NBA level.

Popovich, who loathes individual awards like Coach of the Year, is also a direct descendant of the Dean Smith-Larry Brown school of "Play hard, play smart and play together" basketball. This translates on the court to a lot of crisp rotations with a minimum of fouls on defense while sharing the ball, making the extra pass, spreading the court and milking the corner three-point shot or Tim Duncan's inside presence on offense.

This season, the Spurs' roster is more international than ever before with players who come from France to Australia or Canada to Brazil with a few stops in Argentina or the Virgin Islands!

Pop laid down the blueprint for the edifice, a rejuvenated Tim Duncan is the crew chief, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker are the brilliant painters with creative, artistic hands and all the other workers are totally in acceptance of their roles right down to the last man!

Pop has created top notch players out of rookies and also-rans this season and intelligently added important weapons like Boris Diaw and Stephen Jackson late in the season just to make sure all the positions were oppurtunistically backed-up in case of injury.

Diaw, whose altruistic style fits in perfectly, is reborn while starting during this incredible playoff run and his best buddy Parker did his team a favor by lobbying for Boris' signature.

Parker is playing the best ball of his career as Pop and Duncan have anointed him the leader and go-to player of this 2012 team and the Frenchman has responded by reducing his errors of judgement and producing a career year in assists which keeps everybody happy and on the same page.

I'm not sure that all these human and international qualities will be enough to eliminate the young lions of Oklahoma City, but we should be headed for one of the best Western Conference Finals ever, which, in my opinion will provide the future NBA champions.

The Thunder are young, mega-talented, energetic, intense and have shown during these playoffs an amazing capacity to learn from past errors (see Russell Westbrook) and to come back from being down to win close games with guts and rage (see Kevin Durant).

Kind of reminds us of Olympiakos, n'est-ce pas?

George Eddy

FIBA

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