I spent some time in Barcelona this summer. It was my second time there. And I can tell you that Barcelona is a fantastic, wonderful place, but only if you don’t spend too much time in the heart of the city, where tourists flock. The most famous street in downtown Barcelona is Las Ramblas, and it’s flooded with street performers, locals, but also hoards of pickpockets and nutjobs. And it’s directly next to an extremely bad neighborhood called La Raval, a neighborhood where not a lot of actual Spanish people live.
I quickly learned that the best way to enjoy Barcelona is to stick to the residental neighborhoods. They have less nightlife than the busy areas, but are still as alive as you’d want them to be, and far more fascinating than the crowded tourist spots.
The point of my mentioning this is, Tyson Chandler himself recently learned that the tourist heart of Barcelona has problems. Here’s Chandler, via his NBA.com blog:
So after we left the restaurant, I took off, walking faster to get ahead of them and take pictures. I’m taking pictures and all of a sudden, I hear somebody start cursing at me. I’m looking through my camera lens at the time, so I can’t see anything but the pictures I’m taking. I come from up under, and this dude walks up to me, cursing me out.
I put my camera down and I’m like, “Am I not supposed to be taking pictures here?” He starts yelling in Spanish and I can’t understand him obviously. He looked homeless to me, and I’m saying, “Oh, I’m not supposed to be taking pictures here. I’m sorry.”
He’s just screaming at me and I put the camera away and walk away. But then he’s still going off and I see like 10 more homeless people up against the wall with dogs and stuff. It looked to me like the other 10 people were asking him what he was doing, but they were speaking Spanish, so I don’t know what they were saying.
The guy’s walking toward me and I’m putting my hand out like, “Stay back.” I walk backwards and start to turn around, but then, in the corner of my eye, I see him reach back to throw something. I kinda ducked and all these coins hit me.
He threw a bunch of coins at me.
At this point, I wanted to just go at it. This dude just hit me all over my back with coins, and he’s still screaming at me. But I told him, “Listen, you had better stay back.”
And I look at my wife and that’s the only thing that could calm me down. I see my pregnant wife and realize that I can’t have a situation go down like that. My teammates were in shock, because they saw what happened. I didn’t want anything else to happen so I tried to calm myself down. I started walking away from him and he kept his distance.
I personally know three girls (separate people who don’t know each other) who had their cameras stolen by pickpockets in Barcelona this summer.
I loved the place, as soon as I learned to hang out about a 20+ minute walk away from La Ramblas.
–Jeff
The New York Daily News (Julian Garcia) reports on Nets forward Yi Jianlian’s preseason play so far: Yi has been pretty good offensively (14 ppg) but has struggled to grab rebounds (five in three games) and on the defensive end. Yi admitted he had a hard time with defending the pick-and-roll in his first two preseason games, but Frank said “it’ll happen” as long as Yi continues to work at it and learn how to play aggressively on that end “without committing needless fouls.” Frank added this, too: “I think the thing you can’t discount too is there’s a little bit – not much – but a little bit of a language barrier. So he’s got to do a little bit more thinking initially until he gets comfortable with voice recognition. He’ll get it. It’s just going to take some time.” As for rebounding, Frank said, “In the Olympics he was one of the leading rebounders, so I think he has it in him.”
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (Charles F. Gardner) reports: It didn’t take long for Milwaukee Bucks rookie Joe Alexander to be discovered by the Chinese media. Before the Bucks’ practice Tuesday at the Guangzhou Gymnasium, the 6-foot-8 Alexander was swarmed by a huge group of reporters. His fluency in Mandarin was one reason for his popularity, and the fact he spent much of his youth living in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taiwan. “They enjoyed me a little bit,” Alexander said in a phone interview. “There was a pretty fair amount (of media), more than I’m used to.”
The San Antonio Express-News (Jeff McDonald) reports: Manu Ginobili, the Spurs’ leading scorer last season, will miss at least all of November while recuperating, coach Gregg Popovich said. “Manu will be out 20 to 25 games – until mid-December at the latest,” Popovich said on the eve of Spurs training camp. Doctors initially gave Ginobili a timetable of 8-12 weeks for recovery. The most optimistic end of that spectrum would put him back in uniform for the start of the regular-season. For now, it appears the Spurs will approach Ginobili’s return more cautiously. When training camp begins today, Ginobili, 31, will be a non-participant. He has been able to walk without crutches and without pain for some time but has not been cleared to participate in any activities other than swimming and weightlifting.