I just realized that Ray Allen is going to Boston, where there is no WNBA team for his daughter and him to support! And here I was all excited for him to be on a team with Allan Ray. Basically for no other reason than the symmetric silliness.

But I guess that he has more than enough money to go down to Connecticut (or anywhere else he wants to go) for a game. So that's something.

In international basketball news, I'm going to go to an entire day's games of the FIBA Americas! I get to see Brazil, USA, Argentina, Canada, Virgin Islands, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. It was affordable too.

Brazil has almost all of the major players accounted for. Nene has decided to stop being an ass about Team Brazil, and should be playing this summer. Tiago Splitter isn't yet playing for Popovich (who has a reputation for convincing his players not to play for their national teams), so he'll be there. Anderson Varejao is his usual excited self, and seems to be completely committed to the team.

Barbosa is a different story. He seems committed to the team, but I'm not sure if he'll be able to act on that commitment this summer. I was angry about how he was playing in the Spurs series, but as it turns out he was injured and in need of surgery. So I guess I owe him an apology.

The recuperation might interfere with the tournament, and also he has problems with insurance. I love the fact that he's made this a public issue in the press. Now granted, that article came out almost three weeks ago, but I haven't heard anything new on this subject. (Although FIBA is terrible at all things internet-related and it's not like the American press cares about international teams, so anything is possible.)

This all means that if insurance gets dealt with and he recuperates well, I could be seeing Leandrinho in August. Which, y'know, is all that really matters. Right?

(Also interesting, at least as a footnote, is his work with the college basketball system in Brazil. This is in huge contrast with Nene, who basically said, "fix it yourself.")