When I saw that the Nuggets only preseason home game would be played against Partizan Belgrade, I unfairly derided the boys from Belgrade.
After reading my immature dismissal of Partizan Belgrade, AOL Fanhouse's Chris Tomasson emailed me a great article that he wrote about Serbian and Montenegrin basketball back when he was covering the 2004 Olympics for The Rocky Mountain News. Tomasson's article notes that Partizan heads a basketball "assembly line" for a country that has turned out terrific NBA players such as Vlade Divac, Peja Stojakovic and the late Drazen Petrovic (one of my all-time favorite non-Nuggets).
More recently, Partizan has racked up three straight Adriatic League (or NLB League) championships and won the Euroleague Championship back in 1992.
The bottom line is that the Nuggets should take these guys seriously and spare themselves a repeat of their embarrassing performance at Utah this week. Go Nuggets!
On a side note, the game doesn't appear to be televised on Altitude (at least not according to my guide on DirecTV) nor is it being televised on NBATV. Unless I'm missing something here and it's magically being televised somewhere I don't know about, I say shame on the NBA and Altitude/the Nuggets organization. Not only should the game be televised locally for Nuggets fans, but it should at the very least – as should all preseason games for all NBA teams – be televised to NBA League Pass customers and/or on NBATV. I really don't need to see "Real Training Camp: Los Angeles" repeated all day as they've been doing on NBATV. Get with the program, guys, and know what your fans (i.e. paying customers) want. I see an angry letter from yours truly coming shortly…
