They've Got Game -- and Tapas, Too

GRANADA, Spain I couldn't get to sleep last Monday night. It was partly the late-summer-evening ambience of this graceful old city, where locals and tourists linger in the outdoor cafes over platefuls of tapas and a couple of cold cervezas, enjoying good companionship and the soft breezes that blow in from the Sierra Nevada mountains.

But mostly what kept me awake was the memory of the thousands of Greek fans who'd filled the Palacio de Deportes hours earlier on the opening day of Eurobasket, the biennial European basketball championships. For two hours, they'd put heart and soul into urging on their home team, and as my head hit the pillow, I could still hear their thunderous chants, accentuated by pounding bass drums: "Hel-las! Hel-las!"

For a basketball lover like me, Eurobasket is Hoops Heaven: two or three games daily featuring some of today's top players and teams. And at the end of the day, you can head out for some of the best nightlife in the world.

I used to be a diehard fan of the National Basketball Association. I'm proud that the first word my younger son, Nick, uttered was "dunk." (Okay, maybe I force-fed it to him. Just a little.) But my first night in Granada confirmed what I've discovered in the past several years: Forget the NBA. European basketball is just way more fun.

Yes, the NBA still produces the world's most talented players -- nobody in this tournament can compare to LeBron James, Dwyane Wade or Kobe Bryant, though Dirk Nowitzki of Germany and France's Tony Parker come pretty close. But lately, all that U.S. talent hasn't translated into great basketball. It may be an American sport, but the United States gets beaten regularly in international competition, and the NBA has become a cathedral of dull, almost unwatchable games.

As someone who has followed the sport closely for four decades, I've found it painful to observe the decline of U.S. basketball. Talented young men with no sense of how to play the game fill the rosters of NBA teams. European players, by contrast, are better coached and understand teamwork. The Greeks show a cohesion that Americans can only dream about. Or have nightmares about -- the United States lost to Greece in the 2006 World Championships.

Last Tuesday, Greece showed its mettle again: It outlasted a Serbian team that had forced overtime when one of its stars, Milan Gurovic, made an improbable 40-foot shot at the buzzer. But Greece persevered to take the game, 69 to 68, and remain on course to repeat as Eurobasket champions -- unless host Spain continues to roll over the opposition with its collection of NBA stars. One of the biggest icons of this basketball-mad country, even bigger than movie star Penelope Cruz, is 7-foot Pau Gasol of the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies. Spain, not the United States, is the defending world champion, as locals regularly remind you.

Like other Europeans, the Greeks and the Spaniards learned decades ago from the greatest U.S. basketball minds -- Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics and North Carolina's Dean Smith, among others -- and studied the top American players, including the Los Angeles Lakers' Jerry West, whose picture-perfect jump shot has been copied across the continent. Then they applied that knowledge to developing their own take on the game.

That was the revelation I had covering Eurobasket in 2003: The Lithuanian and Spanish teams that made it to the final then were playing NBA throwback basketball -- making the extra pass, moving well without the ball. This was the game I'd grown up watching and the game I loved. The beautiful basketball of the 1980s NBA, of the Celtics and the Lakers, was now being played by guys named Sarunas and Arvydas and Juan Carlos and Jorge.

From the stands, the European game is much more entertaining. The arenas, including the one here in Granada, are about half the size of their NBA counterparts, and the games are shorter -- 40 minutes instead of 48 -- and move a lot faster. You don't have coaches micromanaging every play or continually calling timeouts, the way they do in the NBA. And I love the egalitarianism. NBA stars have been getting preferential treatment from the referees for decades, but in European ball, refs seem to go out of their way to bust the chops of a whiny star. Russia's Andrei Kirilenko and Serbia's Marko Jaric, both NBA players, are subject to the same whims of the officials as their teammates, and they know better than to complain.

Compare this to the way NBA games tax their fans. Who can afford those ticket prices, for one thing? Throw in the outrageous cost of concessions, and you can fly to Europe for the same amount you'd spend on a couple of games. The players mostly seem bored (which makes the games boring). And why do so many teams, including the Washington Wizards, think that they have to besiege you nonstop with video clips, ear-shattering pop songs, shills with a microphone who instruct fans to "Make some noise!" and goofy fan promotions? (I'll forever thank "The Simpsons" for that episode in which a character gets killed by a T-shirt flung from one of those obnoxious giant slingshots.)

There's no audience coaching over here in Europe; the exuberance is real, and infectious. The singing, chanting and scarf-waving are carryovers from soccer, but you don't get the fan violence of that sport (well, Greek and Italian fans need to be reined in sometimes). You watch and you cheer: What a concept!