Is this heaven? No, it's Europe...

As a fan of any and all basketball (except for 90's style Knicks murderball), I am very curious about the euro basketball scene. But at this point, it's basically a mythical fantasy land to me. A place full of slow-but-coordinated 6'11" jump shooters who can pass. A place where Orlando Woolridge was king (my dad's favorite line about him when I was growing up in Chicago: "There's a D in Woolridge, but it's silent."). Where fundamentally sound NCAA players go to bang hot French chicks and populate the world with Tony Parkers. Is this heaven? No, it's Europe...

While this is all lollipops and fuzzy bunnies, there is a darker, more mysterious side to European basketball. I don't know much about it, because all of their secrets are in some strange, non-English language. All I know is that I am not allowed to find out where they buried Tre Simmons' body. And that bothers me, cause I spent about two hours this morning digging through Spanish league websites trying to find him to no avail. The lesson here is it's very very difficult to find simple information about many of the Euro leagues if you do not speak the native language of the league (or you are unwilling to shell out 29 cents a day). As much as I've seen euros complain on US basketball blogs about self centered we are when it comes to basketball, you'd think that there would be some nice internet resources out there for us "stupid Americans". But there aren't. At least as far as I can tell. While there are nice sites for The Euroleague (which is a best of the best league like the UEFA Champions League is for soccer football), there are very few English language resources for the national leagues.

I suppose part of my problem is that I am looking for somewhat marginal players. Chester "Tre" Simmons and Jamaal Willams are not exactly world beaters and play on marginal teams. And although I did find some information on each player (I was more lucky with Jamaal Willams), a lot of it was old, and none of it was in English. If I was Europe, and I wanted to show off my basketballs to dumb Americans increase the exposure of European basketball in the US, I would create an English language website that helps college fans to track the progress of their favorite gritty team player from their college team who are ballerin' it up over there. I would read that site daily. I would put a link to it on Hec Heads.