Spain arrogant? I beg to differ!

LONDON (The Friday Eurovision) - The year was 1987, and it was a pivotal moment in basketball because Greece hosted the  EuroBasket and against all odds, made it to the final and upset the Soviet Union 103-101.

Panagiotis Yannakis, the Greek coach now, was on that team and so was another legend in Europe, Nikos Galis.

That was the year I left the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and in my time there, there was a Greek center who played for Jim Valvano at NC State named Panagiotis Fassoulis.

He was also on that Greece team.

It is, I'm told, the year that changed basketball in Europe.

It certainly sparked the game into life in Greece.

The EuroBasket was special then, as it is today.

Just five days on from the amazing finish at this year's event in the Palacio Deportes, I go to bed thinking about JR Holden's shot with 2.1 seconds remaining that bounced off the rim, then the backboard and into the hoop.

I also think about Spain's Pau Gasol putting up a shot at the buzzer that hit the backboard, came down over the hoop and hit the front of the rim before bouncing out.

Had that shot gone in, Jose Calderon would have been the EuroBasket MVP. Instead, the award went to Andrei Kirilenko of Russia.

I can still see Zakhar Pashutin, a veteran in the Russian team, running across midcourt with a huge smile and looking for someone to hug.

I remember looking at Gasol on his back, like he'd just run a marathon and been edged out at the finish line by an outsider.

This EuroBasket, just as the one 20 years ago, was special.

In group play in Seville, Croatia shocked Spain with Marko Tomas' long three-pointer just 3.1 seconds from the end.

In Alicante, Jaka Lakovic drilled a three-ball at the buzzer to beat Italy.

In Granada, Milan Gurovic stepped over halfcourt and threw up a prayer that was answered with the Serbian captain's shot hitting off the backboard and falling through the ring to force overtime, only for Greece to win in overtime.

At Madrid's Telefonica, Israel upset Croatia and Portugal upset Israel.

Vasilis Spanoulis also shot down Croatia with a three-pointer at the buzzer. There was a real buzz in that arena, albeit not when France played Germany.

Tracy McGrady showed up wearing a putrid green outfit with a baseball cap and 'shades' and sat in a box with a couple of people around him and security guards treating him like a head of state.

The LOC printed some quotes from McGrady later on. He said something like he was happy to be in town, watching his fellow NBA players. I'm assuming he meant Tony Parker and Dirk Nowitzki.

In truth, every time I looked up at McGrady, his head was down and he was doing something with his mobile phone, maybe playing games or sending texts.

Of course, there was a real NBA hero in the Telefonica.

Bill Russell was in the stands for a couple of days and he looked on proudly. Russell, the Boston Celtics legend, was being inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame and he watched a few games.

He had a glint in his eye, like he'd stepped into a new world. I think he felt, deservedly, that maybe he had something to do with what was happening down on the floor.

You did, Bill.

Then behind me, there was Tony Parker sitting behind me. That would be Tony Parker Sr, the father of the French point guard.

This guy was not the least bit pretentious, and guess what - he watched his son's game, and then stayed to watch the next two games as well.

It's easy to see where his son gets his love for the game.

There were moments we'll never forget in Madrid, like Marco Belinelli's slam dunk in the fourth quarter that helped propel Italy past Turkey.

In the Palacio Deportes, there was Greece, dead and buried, resurrecting their title defense by coming from 16 points down midway through the fourth quarter to stun Slovenia in the quarter-finals.

Theo Papaloukas scored the winning basket and was so tired in the mixed zone after that I thought he was going to pass out.

Spain didn't live up to expectations, but Russia surpassed theirs.

How badly I had misjudged Kirilenko. There wasn't a nicer guy I had the privilege of speaking to during my whole stay in Madrid.

How badly some people are misjudging Spain, too. True, they were guilty of ref-baiting, as a colleague so lucidly pointed out. In football terminology, they dived to win a penalty.

But to suggest these guys were arrogant, cocky or whatever is way off the mark.

This Spain team won a silver medal. Russia won the gold.

At no time in the year since the their 2006 FIBA World Championship gold medal win, when they beat Greece to the title, did Spain's players boast or beat their chests to say they were the best. If they did, I didn't hear them.

They went to great lengths, in fact, to say how level European basketball is.

You think they were arrogant? GET REAL.

Let's be positive here. This was a EuroBasket to remember. This was, in my opinion, the best EuroBasket since I started watching them in 1997. It may have been the best of all time.

And I think they are only going to get better.

Jeff Taylor