Stories about international basketball travels… continued

TULCEA, Romania — Sneaking onto the court during halftime to ask the guest star for a selfie? I know we had that crazy incident during Game 1 of the NBA Finals in San Antonio where a fan next to Victor Vembanyama ran dangerously into the woods looking for some in-game virality, but you don’t see that very often at home.

Focus on return home.

As I was quickly reminded on a hastily arranged trip to the stunning new 5,000-seat Danubius Arena in a port city unaccustomed to hosting major sporting events, on the international stage things can be a little more informal than we’re used to in an NBA environment.

And that led to a scene that The Words Guy actually captured (this time) on my iPhone camera, although I didn’t quite believe it was happening: Bulgaria star Sasha Vezenkov kindly agreed to stop and pose for a few photos with the giddy Romanian youths who interrupted his warm-up before the home team returned to the court for the second half:

To this point, Vezenkov had scored 22 of 36 points in Bulgaria’s final 103-86 victory over Romania in a EuroBasket 2029 qualifier, giving me a juicy taste of the FIBA ​​showcase. From August 27 to August 31, 40-year-old NBA players. — along with a slew of former NBA players like Vezenkov — stepped up for their national teams and gave us all a much-needed five-day fix while we endure the wait, which still has three weeks left for the 28 teams (all but Dallas and Houston heading to Macau) that won’t officially reunite until a surge of Media Day events begins around the league on September 28th.

Just last Monday: Denver’s Nikola Jokic overcame a serious illness to score a convincing win over Italy…Miami’s Pelle Larsson continued his breakout summer for Sweden with another strong performance in a loss to Wemby-captained France…Philadelphia’s VJ Edgecombe (Bahamas), new Atlanta teammates Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Lou Dort (Canada) and Los Angeles Clippers’ Rui Hachimura (Japan) showed off his dazzling stats… and Greece managed to beat Spain in overtime without the resting Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Meanwhile, your humble correspondent went on his own little adventure.