NEW YORK - Iran's national basketball team has been invited by the NBA to train in Utah and play against NBA and NBADL teams in preparation for the Beijing Olympics.
Iran will take part in the Rocky Mountain Revue, the Utah Jazz-hosted summer league and will play four games. The team will also observe NBA team practices and talk to players and coaches about basketball.
"In an increasingly turbulent world, it is rewarding to bring people together to celebrate teamwork, discipline and respectful competition on the court," NBA commissioner David Stern said in a statement. "The NBA embraces the opportunity to welcome the Basketball Federation of Iran and the Iranian Olympic team in a demonstration of how something as simple as a game of basketball can promote understanding."
Iran will play two games against the NBA D-League Ambassadors, a team consisting of 10 players who competed in the developmental league last season, on July 17 and July 20 at The Factory - the Utah Flash's practice facility. Iran will also face a Dallas Mavericks team on July 19 and a Utah Jazz squad on July 21, with both games at Salt Lake Community College.
This message has been edited by kia4ever on Jul 19, 2008 4:19 PM This message has been edited by kia4ever on Jul 19, 2008 4:10 PM
Re: Iranian Baketball team to play 4 teams in the US
July 19 2008, 4:10 PM
Iranian basketball team practicing with NBA in USA
By David on Jul 18, 2008 in Mideast
The Iranian national basketball team, currently the FIBA ASIA Champions, are participating this July 15-21 in Utah against American NBA (National Basketball Association) teams and NBA Developmental League Ambassadors. The Iranian players and coaches will also observe NBA practices, engage in basketball discussions, and visit American cultural sites.
NBA Commission David Stern says, gthe NBA embraces the opportunity to welcome the Basketball Federation of Iran and the Iranian Olympic team in a demonstration of how something as simple as a game of basketball can promote understanding.h
The Iranian team is preparing for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China.
Hamed Haddadi, a 72 star in the Iranian Super League and a member of the Olympic team, has stated he will sign with an NBA club after he competes for Iran in the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Jaber Darrehsari, who is 75, is a young center who can dunk the ball without leaving the ground.
In addition to two games against NBA Developmental League players, the Iranian basketball team will also play against the NBA summer league teams of the Dallas Mavericks and the Utah Jazz.
The visit and cultural exchange resulted from President Bushfs 2006 call for expanded people-to-people exchanges wwith Iran.
Re: Iranian Baketball team to play 4 teams in the US
July 20 2008, 4:33 AM
btw here's the result Iran NT in pre-game for Olympic in USA
Quote:D-League Ambassadors 79, Iran 60
LEHI, UT, JULY 17, 2008 The NBA D-League Ambassadors prepared for their three-game schedule at the Rocky Mountain Revue presented by Stores OnLine, with a 79-60 victory over the Iranian National Team in the first of two scrimmage games between the two teams at The Factory, the official practice facility of the Utah Flash.
The Ambassadors featured a balanced attack with Nick Lewis and Carl Elliott each scoring a team-high 11 points, while Glen McGowan chipped in 10 points and 10 rebounds. Weve really stressed sharing the ball, said Joey Meyer, the teams head coach. Our guys shared the ball well tonight. I was very pleased with that.
The NBA D-League Ambassadors who have only been practicing together for a few days, scored 46 points in the paint and forced the Iranian National Team to turn the ball over 32 times. Our guys are a good group and I think well get better as the week goes on, said Meyer.
Earlier in the day both teams participated in a one-hour basketball clinic which included 50 kids from the Utah County Boys and Girls Club, Thanksgiving Point and Utah Flash campers. This clinic, as well as the two scrimmages between the Ambassadors and Iranian National Team, are designed to promote understanding and good will through basketball.
The teams will meet again this Sunday, July 20 at 7 p.m. ET at The Factory. Both the Ambassadors and Team Iran begin their schedule of games at the Rocky Mountain Revue presented by StoresOnline on Saturday; with the Ambassadors facing the San Antonio Spurs, and the Iranian Olympic Basketball team matching up against the Dallas Mavericks.
the score not so good for Iranians but U gain alot think from this game,Iran never play against team with american style (play more Phisicly and got point from inside paint),..
in this first game u had amazing offensife rebound but decent defensive rebound but the problem for Iran NT is the turnover, it succesfully killing Iranian's game btw Samad Nikkhah the best scorer on that game..
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This message has been edited by pancasila on Jul 20, 2008 4:37 AM This message has been edited by pancasila on Jul 20, 2008 4:35 AM
Re: Iranian Baketball team to play 4 teams in the US
July 20 2008, 4:45 AM
'Second game
Dallas 79 - Iran 62
Quote:SALT LAKE CITY (July 19, 2008) The Rocky Mountain Revue started Saturday with a cultural exchange. The Dallas Mavericks and the Iranian national team exchanged gifts at half court to begin the game. Irans Hamed Ehadadi put the first 4 points on the board. Coach Mario Elie was forced to call a time out when Iran pushed the score to 6-0, which drove the early arriving, majority, pro-Iran crowd wild. The Iranian team maintained the lead 20-18 to finish the quarter.
The crowd was quieted during the second quarter as the Mavericks began a balanced defensive and offensive attack. Dallas charged ahead for the lead at 31-25 with six and a half minutes remaining. The difference between NBA and international rules proved to be a bit of a challenge for the Iranian team. The Mavericks Aaron Miles came alive to score 12 points leading his teams attack to finish the half with an 11 point lead. Teammate Gerald Green contributed 10 points as well. Ehadadi finished the half leading his team with 13 points. He also had 2 blocked shots, 1 assist and 9 rebounds.
The second half began with chants, drums, flags flying, cheering, and tambourines; but despite the efforts of the Iranian supporters, they were not able to push their team to the lead. Dallas became relentless on offense with impressive assists from several players. Darryl Watkins, JaJuan Smith and Aaron Miles all snagged some steals for the Mavs during the third quarter.
Despite their losing effort, team Iran had enthusiastic support to finish the contest. Hamed Sohrabnejad hit a long 3 pointer with 2 minutes left in the game; launching the crowd to their feet with chants of Iraaan, Iraaan. The final score was 79-62 in Dallas favor.
Mohammad Nikkhah finished with 16 points, and 1 assist, Hamed Ehadadi led all scorers with 19 points 2 assists and 16 rebounds. Gerald Green topped the Mavs in scoring with 15, he also had 1 assist. Aaron miles finished with 12 points, 1 steal, and 6 assists. Reyshawn Terry finished with 11 points as well.
Re: Iranian Baketball team to play 4 teams in the US
July 20 2008, 4:56 AM
'btw my fav player in Iran team during Asian championship are Hamed ehadadi, and Nikkhah brothers, Samad and aidin, its always enjoying watching that two brothers compliting eachother, if the one play bad the other try to cover it so on so forth.. to bad Aidin died in car accident (RIP)
here's their pic, from left : Aidin (RIP), Samad, Samad' wife
Re: Iranian Baketball team to play 4 teams in the US
July 20 2008, 5:06 AM
btw @ Kia
do u know that one young Iranian player plans to be first Iranian to receive U.S. hoops scholarship,..
Quote:PHILADELPHIA -- One week ago, in an episode of U.S.-Iran relations that did not make anyone's evening news, the 18-year-old captain of the Iranian junior national team took a pass from an American teammate, drove to the basket and dunked with such authority that some Division I coaches in the gym began curiously examining his bio page in the Reebok All-American Camp's handbook.
Coaches from Seton Hall and Oklahoma State -- two of the first schools to offer him a scholarship -- looked on as well, perhaps realizing that the secret of Arsalan Kazemi was beginning to get out of the bag. He arrived in Houston in February, and plans to become, in 2009-10, the first Iranian to play college basketball in the U.S.
Kazemi's individual breakthrough, though, comes against a backdrop of tense international headlines. During the Reebok camp, news broke of his country's most recent ballistic missile tests, which were an overt threat to the U.S. and Israel as they face the possibility of engaging Iran in armed conflict over its nuclear program.
Kazemi hails from Isfahan, a central-Iranian city with a metropolitan-area population of 3.4 million. It is, incidentally, also the home of the country's only Uranium Conversion Facility, or UCF, which produces the hexafluoride for both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's refusal to halt this enrichment process has been the primary source of conflict between Iran and the Bush Administration.
Kazemi, meanwhile, could not seem more detached from that global controversy. His father runs a factory in Isfahan -- one that produces candy. Kazemi is a basketball-crazed teenager who grew up watching NBA telecasts in Arabic (his favorite player is Tim Duncan) and loves the U.S. because it's rich in a resource that Iran is sorely lacking: conveniently accessible practice gyms.
To many of the coaches at the Reebok camp, Kazemi's skill set was more intriguing than his status as a potential pioneer from the Middle East. Those who had seen his first game -- and first dunk -- in Philly were remarking how quickly the 6-foot-7 forward could elevate, how smooth he was in the open floor and how much of a team-first approach he had.
He is proud to be a product of Iran, regardless of its status in the international community. "When I come here, some people from home told me not to say I was from Iran -- because maybe [the Americans] would get mad," he said. "But I'm not scared. Everywhere, I say I'm from Iran, and people are happy and want to help me. Everybody wants to know what happened between Iran and America."
That explanation would require a 50-year history of the hostility that preceded the current nuclear standoff. The story of how Iran's first scholarship-worthy basketball player ended up in the U.S. is far more manageable.
Anthony Ibrahim has a blown-up version of the photograph in his travel-agency office in Houston. It was taken at the 2007 West Asian games in Tehran, during an Under-17 matchup of Iran and Syria, at the exact moment Ibrahim knew he was seeing something special.
"Arsalan was on a 2-on-1 fastbreak," said Ibrahim, who was in the crowd, "and I still can't believe what he did. The guard threw the ball high on the right side -- not in the right position -- and Arsalan jumped from outside the block, caught it and dunked it. His hand is reaching high up on the backboard, and his hips are up on shoulders of the guy guarding him. It's a great picture."
The Lebanese-born Ibrahim was no ordinary fan. For a three-year stint, beginning in 2004, he had served as the color analyst for NBA broadcasts on the Arabic network Al-Hurra, a federally sponsored satellite channel that the Washington Post called the "centerpiece of a U.S. government campaign to spread democracy in the Middle East." Al-Hurra, which is based in Virginia and has been funded with $350 million of U.S. taxpayer money since '04, would use TNT video feeds of marquee NBA games, with Ibrahim serving, essentially, as its version of Doug Collins. That made Ibrahim a known voice to Iranian NBA fans such as Kazemi.
Kazemi's Iranian team finished 5-0 in those West Asian games, and he was named MVP. Ibrahim took a tape of the Syria game back to the U.S. to show a few coaching contacts in the Big 12 and Big East. "They said, 'Oh my god,' when they saw his athleticism. The biggest thing that they saw was that he stole the ball so much, and that his hand-eye coordination was so good." Confident that he could put Kazemi on the path toward a Division I scholarship in the U.S., Ibrahim began talking with Kazemi and his parents about a move stateside.
Ibrahim had never brought over an Iranian player, but he had successfully put a group of Lebanese prospects into college basketball, the most recent being Bassel Bawji, a 6-7 forward from Beirut who joins Tulsa as a freshman in '08-09. Ibrahim either has the players live with him in Houston (as Bawji did for his senior year of high school), finds host families or has them attend boarding school elsewhere prior to college.
The plan Ibrahim pitched to Kazemi's family was that their son and another prospect, Lebanese sophomore Ahmad Ibrahim, would live in Houston in the offseason and attend the Patterson School in Patterson, N.C. Kazemi, who had resorted to working out at the facilities of a club team in Istafan, Zob Ahan, when he needed a gym, would have access to American facilities, and use his senior year of high school to polish up on his language skills and become NCAA-eligible. "Right now," he says, "My English is not good enough to pass the SAT."
Kazemi finally made the move this February, and three days after arriving in Houston, he traveled to Patterson to enroll for the remainder of his junior year. Chris Cheney, the coach there, is well known for having tutored a number of current and former Memphis players -- Shawne Williams, Antonio Anderson, Robert Dozier and Roburt Sallie -- while in his previous job at Laurinburg Prep. On Kazemi's first day at Patterson, just after he and Ibrahim had finished buying supplies for his dorm room, Cheney threw the Iranian import into the fire -- by giving him a jersey and subbing him into a live, second-team game.
"We did that just to see how he would react," said Cheney, "and you could tell right away that he was going to be a very special player. He was very unselfish, didn't show off, and tried to be part of the team. That, in my mind, is what separates him from a lot of players."
Kazemi will become a full-fledged member of Patterson's team for '08-09. Ibrahim says in addition to being pursued by Oklahoma State and Seton Hall, Kazemi has offers from Missouri, Arkansas and Rice. Cheney sees Kazemi as a high-major prospect whose recruitment has yet to really heat up -- especially given that he has yet to even showcase his game in a real, varsity environment in the States.
Ibrahim has taken some steps to Americanize Kazemi's basketball skill set; in his work as a travel agent, Ibrahim has counted a number of NBA players as clients, and he called upon one of them for a favor this year. That was how Kazemi's primary workout partner in Houston became Nick Van Exel.
"The first time Anthony told me we were going to work out with a real NBA player, I was so excited," Kazemi said. "[Van Exel] knows so much stuff that he can show me. We have been doing a lot of ballhandling and shooting." Van Exel has confided in Ibrahim that he thinks Kazemi, as a collegian, "can play anywhere in the country."
During spring break from Patterson, in April, Ibrahim took Kazemi to play in the Houston Rockets' Blacktop Battle, a high-profile streetball tournament in the city. There, Kazemi finished third in the dunk contest -- although he questions, half-seriously, whether he was stiffed by internationally unfriendly judges. "I went through my legs [in the air] and dunked it, and the judge only gave me eight," he said, laughing. Lest anyone worry about him being corrupted by the And-1 movement that has decayed American fundamentals, Kazemi makes it clear that what went on in the Blacktop Battle, "was not real basketball."
No player -- especially an unknown name from Iran -- can earn scholarship offers based on a few workouts and a streetball tournament, though, which is why Ibrahim sent Kazemi on a barnstorming tour of Big 12 summer camps earlier this summer. During June, Kazemi and Ibrahim road-tripped to Texas, Texas A&M, Missouri and Oklahoma State, putting on stellar enough performances in the latter three camps to spark recruiting interest. Those were Kazemi's first experiences inside major-college gyms, and he said he was slack-jawed in amazement -- think Hoosiers entering Hinkle Fieldhouse -- the first time he stepped inside, especially at Gallagher-Iba in Stillwater.
Re: Iranian Baketball team to play 4 teams in the US
July 20 2008, 11:55 AM
Iran basketball team has not been able to take part in Olympics for 60 years, but this time they succeeded, only because of goodwill of China by sending the second youth team to Asia cup last year, so that Iran could get a chance to win the ticket to Beijing.
ran will lose to every team in OG basketball, they are simply too weak.
But well I hope they play well and win at least one match. We will see after few weeks.
This message has been edited by HBN2025 on Jul 20, 2008 12:18 PM This message has been edited by HBN2025 on Jul 20, 2008 11:58 AM
Re: Iranian Baketball team to play 4 teams in the US
July 20 2008, 12:59 PM
It's not always about winning or losing, but about competing and trying your hardest. One learns a lot more from losing than from winning. Whether they lose all their games is irrelevant it's a priceless experience.
