FIBA EUROPE CUP - London Lions

Yes Kelley had an excellent game.

Sadly JRob had probably his worst game in a London jersey.
Hopefully will be back to his brilliance on Wednesday.

Why do they keep taking Jordan S along for the trips with never a thought of playing him?

Can anyone (Saint Pat perhaps)? make head or tail of the London social media posts re. Upcoming games.

It shows 23rd Jan v Newcastle at home and also 23rd Jan Leicester away.

Is one the women’s game?

I was thinking of taking the kids to a home game but it’s confused me completely!

Aha
Simple as that - cheers a lot.

I had to double check as I was rather confused as the Lions post also failed to mention that the Lions women's game against Newcastle is not a home game but is in Birmingham as it's a cup final!
They also got the time wrong for the men's game on Sunday, it's 4pm not 5.30!

Such is Lions social media team.

You should've come and said hi.

The empty seats being filled by schools didn't cost them money. The issue with freebies is where people stop buying tickets because they can get them free or have had them free so many times they don't value the product. Though it would be interesting if there would have been quite so many staff at the event (I was amazed to see them all in the stand after the press conference) if the kids weren't there.

The no "programmes at all" comment has only one flaw. There was a programme. Maybe not on the door you went in at, but i saw plenty of copies.

The whole presentation/crowd was, as you say, better. They just need to keep it up rather than thinking "job done", they need a different set of kids next week, and a different set the following week, and....

Some more thoughts

First time back at the Copper Box for 2+ years and have to say the atmosphere and presentation was way better than before. The Lions were outclassed by a very strong Russian team on the floor, but was well impressed with everything off the floor - enthusiastic announcers, dancers, free clappers, branded signage, video streaming on the big screen, etc. The personal appearance of Patrick Vieira seemed to go down well too. Hopefully this is the start of a promising new era for London basketball.

By far the best off court presentation since 777 took over. They've clearly finally decided to throw money at it & it worked. Felt even more like a proper event than last weeks(& that was good). Of course probably 2000+ didn't pay for their ticket but at this stage I'll take that, it was far better than the 1st 3 European games when hardly anyone turned up.

Of course, the question has to be, why didn't they do this then? Lions won those 3 games, those games actually meant something. If they had done it then, perhaps there would have been a fair chance of a decent number actually buying tickets for these 3 games, although the pricing structure still needs to be sorted out!

So that's it, off court, massive improvements.

On court not so much, in fact you could make a strong case for saying Lions had gone backwards! Particularly if you watched Lions play in Russia, take an 11 point 1st quarter lead and finally lose to a hail Mary on the buzzer.
Lions lost any remote chance in this game in the 1st 5 minutes, rather like last week.
I could write an essay about where things went wrong but to I'm not going to bore everyone that much!

Main points would be that up until fairly recently, Lions players looked like a a quite cohesive unit & the team spirit seemed very good. Looking at the players & James, you'd say that's clearly not the case now. Dirk looks severely unhappy( possibly the fact he doesn't start but Teague does has something to do with that) & there's others who don't seem much better.
The atmosphere was very good, the players should have fed off that and given an even more high energy performance than normal, they didn't.
Almost total lack of fast breaks, Lions were simply too slow, not helped by a complete lack of team offence for most of the game.
Saratov moved the ball very well & Lions defence was wishy-washy at best.(I tried to find a better phrase but couldn't!)

Chris Taiwah come on for 3 minutes, 1 offensive rebound(1 more than Kelley), 1 defensive rebound, 2 points & some decent defence, then never saw another second. Similar with Will Neighbour, came on hit a 3 then never saw another second.
This might have been slightly acceptable if the game had been close but it wasn't. With 5 minutes to go, the bench should have played their part but the coach decided against it, even though some loud individual pointed it out with 2 minutes to go😂😂😉.

Given Jame's demeanour, I do wonder if it's even him making all the decisions about player rotation or if he's been given particular instructions on who to play.

One more European game & then perhaps Lions will get back to some form of team spirit & unity because neither 'Europe only' players seem to be helping that, Teague in particular, who seems to have a lot to say but apart from garbage time points doesn't give nearly enough.

Dunno. Any way of finding out?

You still have mail

There you go. Wasn't hard. Shame you again forgot to come and say hello. It's like you really only watched it at home and made up the attendance figures. That or you really are a coward.
Some more thoughts about the evening.

Reasons this board is dead - episode 427.

Whatever helps you sleep at night. I dont care for getting into it truth be told, but every time I come on here (and its not often now), alls I see is the same old sh*te

Youre not innocent either.