They're keeping Batum out of the middle so his team is down. The Benito Cantu team is playing McMillan style with no turnovers in the 1st quarter.
Nancy opens the quarter 7-0, goes up 3, but Cantu comes back. Everytime the guy says Nancy it sounds like Nazi. "Nazi storms down and stomps on Cantu." Batum just got some points. Now a technical while I'm typing. What happened.
Nik is showing his cheerleading talents. Waves the towel well in the last 2 minutes of the close game.
Both Batum and Freeland sucked today, although Freeland had severe foul trouble. Both games decided by a point: Nancy won, but Unicaja lost to incredible clutchness from Diamantidis: Unicaja was up by 4 with under a minute left and it went like this: Diamantidis three. Diamantidis chases down Tremell Darden (who, incidentally, was the star for Nancy last season) and fouls him. Darden hits one, misses one. Diamantidis drills another three, Panathanaikos wins by 1.
In theory he will have many more. There are no NBA out-clauses for players in China. (Of course there could be handshake deals whereby the teams agreed to waive the player when the lockout ended, but Chandler was a FA.)
Batum is probably playing his last game in France like TP and Turiaf. He's beasting right now. 25pts, 7rebs, 5asts, 1stl, 3blks, and 2 turns in 36 mins. 2 mins left in the game. http://195.56.77.56/n4/?fra_6232 What a way to end his tenure: 27, 7, 5, 4 in 40 mins.
Freeland had another quiet game, but his Unicaja beat Caja Laboral easily. CL just lost Reggie Williams (before the lockout ended - reason: extreme suckage) but had Goran Dragic.
Contrast him with Ekpe Udoh, who is sitting out of practice and his only game in Israel so as not to get injured. Wuss! (Ibaka had a monster game for Real Madrid as well.)
Good luck to all the great players in the Euroleague, I wouldn't want to be there when that region collapses financially.
The new rules seem to have done little to curb players from determining where they play: https://twitter.com/#!/SportandoBasket
Here's a small mix of Nic's time with Nancy: [video=youtube;1pMZi-6jp50]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pMZi-6jp50[/video]