I cannot deny that I have trouble keeping up with EuroLeague and overseas basketball. Partly due to the fact that there are so many teams, divisions, countries and players involved. And partly due to the fact that the system is just so different to what I'm used to following. So when I got my Eurobasket newsletter today about the first round of the EuroCup quarterfinals underway, I figured since it's postseason and the teams are down to a manageable number of eight perhaps it was time to take a look.

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The Lady Vols give thanks! (via utsportstv)

No major matchups today, but just a few videos of what a few women's basketball teams are thankful for.

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I went to see The Mighty Macs with my wife this Saturday.  Halfway through the movie, she said to me, "You know, I think I've seen this movie before."

Indeed.  We've all seen this movie before.  Hoosiers.  The Mighty Ducks.  If you expect The Mighty Macs to break new ground in sports movies, you're going to come away very disappointed.  The movie seems to be made from the "standard sports movie" template.  The only difference is that instead of male sports players striving for victory in the cold, cruel demanding world of sports we have female players.  The bad news is that The Mighty Macs is not Love and Basketball; the good news is that it isn't Juwanna Mann.  Unlike the latter film The Mighty Macs totally has a right to exist.

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Two of women's basketball's mavens were enshrined into the finest of all the basketball halls - in Springfield, Massachusetts, the birthplace of basketball. I've walked those halls, reading about the ancestry of the game, the men and women who shaped the history of the sport. People like John Wooden, Henry Iba, Adolf Rupp and James Naismith himself. I stood to stare at the stories about Bill Russell, Wilt the Stilt, Nate Archibald and Pistol Pete. Doctor J, Kareem, Larry, Magic, Barkley, and Michael's legacy drape the halls surrounding the court. Players and coaches that I grew up hearing about, watching work their magic on the court, wishing I could emulate when I was the shortest and probably one of the slowest girls in my class.

And in the class of 2011, two strong women that I watch work today, Teresa Edwards and Tara VanDerveer join the group as two of not only women's basketball's finest, but the royalty that is reserved for the best in the game, regardless of gender. Both shared their early memories of the sport, recognized those who molded who they became as players and coaches and people. They joined their place in the elite and shared their heartfelt thanks to the sport they've made profession at the Naismith Hall of Fame.

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When the clock strikes midnight on Thursday, muggle-borns across the United States will flock to see the wizarding world perform its last act in the adventures of everyone's favorite half-blood, Harry Potter.

Two of the tallest muggles in Tulsa, Liz Cambage and Kayla Pedersen, might not be lining up at the movies after their game versus Los Angeles. But Harry Potter fever hasn't escaped the pair. In fact, these Tulsa Shock rookies might know more about Hogwarts and its residents than you might expect.

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There are plenty holiday videos from women's basketball teams around the web and to be honest it was difficult to find anything better than Cal's 2009 rendition of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, primarily because all five participants were actively engaged in the song as though they wanted to do it instead of merely following some ambitious SID's instructions. 

But obviously, the holiday season can be about more than Christmas alone and I thought a video posted by Ball State women's basketball "in the spirit of giving this holiday season" captured that better than almost anything else.

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First, we at Swish Appeal would like to publicly thank outgoing WNBA President Donna Orender for her service.

As stated in the WNBA press release, she has been instrumental in the league's growth over the last few years.

During her tenure, the WNBA signed an eight-year extension of the league’s network television contract featuring up to 30 games annually on ABC and ESPN2 and a six-year extension of the Collective Bargaining Agreement with its players.

During Orender’s time at the league, the WNBA introduced the "WNBA Marquee Marketing Partnership" program, which features branded sponsorship of game jerseys, as well as the Inspiring Women Luncheon, which brought together and recognized the nation’s female leaders, including such extraordinary women as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, newscaster Robin Roberts, and UN Ambassador Susan Rice.

The search for Orender’s successor will begin immediately, and NBA Senior Vice President, Team Marketing and Business Operations Chris Granger will oversee the league’s operations on an interim basis.  

We are also particularly thankful that during her administration, the league has been gracious enough to grant us access to games and other league activities to support our passion for the game and help our audience grow beyond our family and friends who just support whatever we do.

So now we'd like to give back by helping along that search for a successor. Like some others, we believe that the league needs to start by looking outside the box to consider a broad and expansive range of candidates in order to ensure that we exhaust all options in our search for the best person to move this league forward.

So here is our completely hypothetical and generally anti-serious list of highly qualified candidates.

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In the process of writing yesterday's piece about what Brian Agler does for the Seattle Storm -- and quite honestly, my argument for why he is a strong candidate for coach of the year -- I stumbled across quotes about "managing" a team vs. "establishing relationships" with players.

NBA coach Phil Jackson is often lauded for his ability to manage the egos of NBA superstars like Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen on the Chicago Bulls or Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal on the Los Angeles Lakers.

It was in fact a focal point of his book Sacred Hoops in which he documents the experience of coaching the Chicago Bulls to their 1990s championships and describes the fundamental task of teaching the triangle as one of teaching "selflessness-in-action", which is essentially a way to describe what it means for players to subordinate their ego to the collective goals of the team. It's something described in Jackson's book Sacred Hoops.

Describing Team Styles: Synergy, Rhythm, and the NCAA Elite (e.g. UConn and Stanford) - Swish Appeal
Perhaps the concepts of harmony, "mindfulness", "self-awareness", selflessness (is that even possible?) or five-man tai chi that Jackson described in Sacred Hoops are simply too abstract or foreign to Western sensibilities for the average person who watches basketball to put effort into understanding. However, for anyone that has actually been on a court and played competitive basketball successfully, the more spiritual concepts should resonate with what I would consider basic court sense.

I would argue -- and Jackson’s 10 NBA championships as a coach might back me up -- that a lot of Jackson's thinking is based on sound basketball principles that ultimately every good basketball coach is interested in: getting a group of players to commit to playing as a team.

When you're trying to coach superstar players as competitive as the stars Jackson has worked with, finding a way to minimize their ego while maximizing the talent of the complementary players on the team -- did anyone ever get more out of Judd Buechler*? -- is a required skill.

So when I asked Seattle Storm players about what Brian Agler's coaching means to their success, I used the word "manage" when asking forward Swin Cash about the team after multiple people mentioned how it's a veteran team that doesn't needs little prodding to stay focused.

Cash suggested a different way to think about it and it made me think about the importance of relationships in women's basketball coaching, a topic that has come up in a number of conversations with players and coaches this season.

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