We have to be more careful with our sports and the terminology used in Europe, the fandom tends to extend past foam fingers and cute chants to full blown violent weapons with bladed implements if you don't, sadly...
It's Euroleague, there's blood all the time thanks to the fans, this is not like the lower bowl of the Toyota center.
Funnily enough my American friends whilst finding the British soccer stadium crowds here in Manchester incredible definitely found the more combative side of our sports culture super intimidating and said they'd never see the like over there. I think the American way's got to be better, almost strange to think you used to have to know which clubs had the worst firms back in the day to avoid the post-game violence. Whilst it's not generally full blown craziness these days, those parts where the home/away fans meet in the stadium can get very "colourful" in both language and action haha.
He played like 7 minutes, scored like 4 pts and got 4 rebs. Turkey got blown out by Lithuania. I think Alpi's conditioning still not there for 5x5 games.
Tbh I'm good with him not playing many minutes all the time. As much as I want to watch him play I also don't care at all about Türkiye's success at all in international competition and every game he plays full contact is a potential injury for games that mean nothing to the Rockets. For friendlies he only needs a run out for the crowds for all I care, let him compete when it matters, but this isn't ever worth the risk.
Yeah, and the NBA has certain rules in place to minimize those risks. NBA players could only join team practices since August 1st, basically 2 weeks after the preparation starts. This is probably why Alpi's conditioning is lagging behind, and they're taking it slowly with him and easing him in. But no doubt he'll play a ton of minutes in the Eurobasket. Huge hopes for Turkey this year. Everyone is expecting medals for them.
If i'm honest I care more about Alpi performing well for Alpi's sake than anything for Türkiye themselves just because I'm not from there and have no real familial/historical/social ties to the area (where I do for other teams.) It's just smart to limit their participation in the meaningless ones, we'll get to see them plenty duking it out when the games matter hopefully. Be interesting to see him play skinny Doncic and see if his game changes much to give us a sneak peak of what to expect in the season and definitely hoping for a Jokic head to head if we're lucky.
Yeah, it's natural. Rockets fans care about Alpi the Rocket. Especially with the crazy salaries nowadays, it would be beyond ridiculous for your player to injure himself playing for some other team and miss the season while you're paying him 30M, 40M or 50M+ per year. Jokic head to head is coming already in the group stage. Porzingis as well. And then potentially one of Franz/Markkanen/Valanciunas in the playoffs. Skinny Luka will only be possible in the quarterfinal or semi, I think.
