Serbia - Fans and Fanatics in European Basketball

From: www.hoopsworld.com
View source article here.
By Nikola Olic

A basketball event happened a month ago unlike anything ever seen on this side of the Atlantic. Well, this side of the Atlantic and the Panama Canal. The event got worldwide broadcasting, with most major networks either mentioning it or linking to it on their web sites. And it was not even the best basketball that Europe has to offer. It was the ULEB competition, trailing Euroleague in basketball supremacy on the Old Continent.

Red Star Belgrade and PAOK Thessaloniki have met many times before. They are represented in the ULEB cup for a reason, both teams being among the best in their respective Serbian and Greek leagues and giving NBA talented players like Vladimir Radmanovic and Peja Stojakovic. But it was not the quality of basketball that made this game bigger than any of their match-ups before. It was the fans, or to use it's word of origin to even better describe what happened: it was the fanatics.

There is an old -- possibly untranslatable -- European joke:

Who's playing, asks a guy. Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia & Montenegro, comes the response. Is that a tournament or a game?

It was something similar to this joke, and equally not funny, that happened in early December at the Hala Pionir arena in downtown Belgrade: There was one team too many. Not on the floor, but in the stands. Red Star and PAOK fans were joined by Red Star's cross-town arch rivals Partizan fans in, well, a fight. They were there to support the enemy of their enemy, and all that negative energy boiled over into a 20-minute pre-game fight that had police scrambling into the stands to separate fans, extinguish burning arena seats and arrest the most violent ones. Clips that soon after made it around the world omitted the perhaps most incredible thing of all -- the game went on as scheduled.

The choice of words best explains the difference between European and NBA fans: opposing team is sometimes not just an opponent, its an enemy. With that difference comes the unique experience of playing in European arenas, an experience that this season's first pick, and Italian native, Andre Bargnani briefly describes as "not even close to the NBA".

One of the reasons is that European sports fans are much closer to the game than they are in the States. Fans are well organized with an established hierarchy who's power and influence can actually get them meetings with team representatives. This happens in Europe's number one sport -- soccer -- more so than in basketball, but the two sports are often not really separate. Part of why incredible fan involvement exists is that there are many sports under one big sport's club umbrella.

Team in question, Red Star Belgrade, is among Serbia's best teams in soccer, basketball, volleyball, handball, all the way down to rifle marksmanship or chess. This allows for fan involvement to more easily grow through generations. These sports clubs have been around for decades, sometimes close to a hundred years. You may be into soccer, your spouse may be into basketball, your kids into chess or skiing, but everybody can still proudly wear Red Star's red and white vertical stripes.

The basketball arena where the fight took place - Hala Pionir - seats only 7000 fans. Perhaps that is not the right word, as there is little sitting going on. Although there are fewer seats in European basketball arenas, the announcer never has to invite the crowds to support their team with "De-Fence". Taking a page from the most dominant European sport, there is no stopping in basketball like there is no stopping in soccer. The chants go on through the whole game, hopefully intimidating both the opposing team and the opposing fans.

Minnesota Timberwolves assistant coach Aleksandar Dzikic -- first NBA coach with no previous United States professional or college experience -- has been a part of many basketball games in Europe and puts the experience in simple words: "We are just looking at the crowd hoping they don't storm the court and come at us". Now that is exciting basketball.