Viva Espagna!

PARIS (The Monday International Show) - From start to finish of the 2009 Eurobasket, Spain was the big story, whether it be playing poorly in the first two games or totally dominating the last four, Spain attracted most of the attention!

The Pau Gasol golden generation, the reigning world champions, make a magnificent first-time Eurobasket trophy raiser with their uptempo, flashy, spectacular style and all-around game that showed no weaknesses beginning with their 23 to 0 run against Lithuania and finishing with their destruction in the final of a fabulous young Serbian team (maybe the next golden generation).

The old master Ivkovic guided his young guns like in a old kung fu movie!

Spain wasn't the only good story at this Eurobasket thanks to Serbia and an incredible semi-final duel with a courageous Slovenian team hurt by injuries.

This was by far the pinnacle game(along with Turkey-Greece and Slovenia-Croatia) of the tournament, behind the Petrovic style performance of 22 year old phenom Teodosic who took over in the money time and overtime after Slovenia let them back in the game with some silly mistakes!

For instance, Erazem Lorbek, who similar to Teodosic collected MVP trophies in FIBA youth competitions, was playing the best ball of his life in this tournament until a costly, brainless fifth foul put Slovenia's best player on the bench!

Then Slovenia didn't foul when they were up three at the end and they let an "in the zone" Teodosic tie the game and force an overtime!

Slovenia finally broke through to the semi-final round but was too beaten up and tired( but also unlucky) to snatch the bronze away from a sly Greek team.

Why sly? Because Greece left France with the hot potato of meeting Spain in the quarters by losing to France a game that neither team really tried to or wanted to win!

Those kind of games always leave me with a queasy feeling.

Win or lose, Greece always seems to find a way to frustrate France, this time by stealing away a bronze medal that France feels it deserved after only losing one game, a historic result for coach Collet's team.

France ended up winning the one game they needed to lose and losing the one game they needed to win!

In any case, France's fifth place and qualification for the next world and european championships was a pretty good performance after two years of dire straits and surviving the additional qualifying round!

Tony Parker probably deserved a spot on the all-tournament team but his poor showing in the biggest game against Spain condemned his chances.

On the other hand, the revenge of MVP Pau Gasol after his heartbreaking performance in the 2007 Madrid final is complete.

Despite missing most of the preparation with a finger injury, Pau became unstoppable in the elimination games when his team finally figured out it was smarter to play inside- out than outside-in!

Early in the tournament Navarro and Rudy were competing for shots but Scariolo calmed the egos and got everyone on the same page after avoiding infamy vs Great Britain.

As Greg Popovich often tells me, the coach's main job is to stay out of the way and don't mess things up, and this was Scariolo's role driving this Ferrari or pedigreed Spanish star bull, if you prefer!

Let's note that Ricky Rubio, the Spanish 18 year old crown jewel deserves the Diamantidis trophy for best defender after suffocating Parker, Spanoulis and Teodosic consecutively in the elimination round (with some great help defence from his teammates).

Wow, a bright future awaits him!

Same thing for Teodosic after this coming out party and for Baby Shaq Sofoklis Schortsanitis who lost 40 kilos but regained his career.

Ilyasova outshined NBA star Turkoglou for a Turkish team that petered out in the end similar to an under-manned Russian team that first surprised us then disappointed us missing a direct spot in the next FIBA World Championship but they will probably be invited because of their Eurobasket title in 2007, anyway.

One of the more touching moments of the tournament came when rookie coach Zdovc paid hommage to his classy 65 year-old mentor Ivkovic after their incredible semi-final battle.

Unfortunately, teams like Lithuania and Germany paid a heavy price for the absences of their confirmed superstars.

All in all, this was a pretty exciting Eurobasket and the defensive and offensive mastery of Spain was pretty to watch, but I feel the tournament should go back to having all teams play on the same days in the second round and quarter-finals and give off days before the semis and final in order to even the playing field as far as recovery time goes.

This would also increase the quality of play because teams would be more rested for the biggest games!

George Eddy