[folkertino]

Local team played a great game yesterday against the leaders in classification, Real Madrid, who were 25-2 this season. Before the game there was a auto&photo session with Florent Piétrus (brother of Mickael) and of course I couldn't miss out on that:


Team played extremely well on both ends and was on target on 3's where we shot 12/25, 6 of which by Thomas Kelati, here going after Rudy Fernandez who's hiding behind Marcus Slaughter's big shoulders.


We took the game 88-79 which was a great result despite having had a lead of 20 in the 3rd. After the game I got auto's from Marcus Slaughter, Dontaye Draper, Tremmell Darden, Rudy Fernandez, Pau Ribas and also of our coach Velimir Perasovic on a card where he's depicted as a player. I found a game ticket someone else had left and decided to pick it up and have Kelati sign it as a token of this memorable game.

[TBarn291]

Great stuff man! That has got to be a ton of fun going to games like that and meeting the players. That picture of Rudy hiding is great lol.

[evanturner12]

is Florent any good?

[folkertino]

(04-08-2013 08:57 AM)TBarn291 Wrote:  Great stuff man! That has got to be a ton of fun going to games like that and meeting the players. That picture of Rudy hiding is great lol.

it's great interacting with the foreign players. especially when you have something of their university it really means alot to them. The reactions are great.
That picture is typically Rudy. Great player, but gets in too many brawls he can't win.

(04-08-2013 09:01 AM)evanturner12 Wrote:  is Florent any good?

Let me put it like this: he can leave the game with 2 points, 4 fouls and a low PIR and still get a standing ovation. Brings a lot of heart and courage to the game. Great person too, like his brother he's always smiling and joking around.

[filamuraireborn]

Nice thread! Like the TTM's and IPA's!

[folkertino]

Valencia Basket played against Lagun Aro, the team from San Sebastian that is going through a pretty rough patch as they currently rank penultimate. In first half our team was better but we didn't quite make a gap, it was only in the second half that the team sharpened up and eventually took the W by 28 points.

I picked up a couple of autos from my home team for my custom set. I also got autos on custom cards from Ekene Ibekwe and Raulzinho Neto (watch out for this guy in a few years).

Most notably I also met Qyntel Woods - former Knicks, Trailblazers - whom I had made three different custom cards for. I had found three great photos and couldn't decide which photo to pick for a card. In the end I decided to just make all three and Woods was tremendously kind and signed all three.

More stuff as always on http://folkscards.webs.com

[folkertino]

Tonight our team Valencia Basket received the team from Valladolid. Only interesting player with them is Ryan Humphrey and I picked up his autograph. I also got a few for my team set and one extra from Justin Doellman on an old Xavier game schedule.

Most interesting event tonight was the home-coming of Victor Claver (current Portland Trail Blazers) who is from here and played here his entire career before making his move to the NBA at the beginnning of this season. We chatted a bit about how things are going and he signed two cards I had made of him.

A few weeks ago another fan had asked me to make a custom set of Maccabi Tel Aviv (Israeli team) for a friend of hers and I finished that a little while ago. She was going to bring them over to Israel and I had asked her as a favor to take two of my cards with her for signature by Nik Caner-Medley, who played here last season. Tonight she brought back the two signed cards, which look great.

Overall a great night with a total of eleven autograph and a team win.

[folkertino]

Yesterday was the last regular season game here and we played against the last classified team of Manresa. We took the Wfairly easy which was important to secure our 4th seed which will give us homecourt advantage in playoffs.
After the game I picked up a few autos for my new standard set of customs, most notably another one of Victor Claver.
The scans don't the the cards any justice, IRL the colors are more vivd and the images sharper. For some reason DeVries didn't sign in the dedicated area, which was a bit of a bummer, lol.
I had also hoped to get autos of Justin and Jrue Holiday who were in town this weekend for an NBA event, but they didn't attend the game unfortunately.

[folkertino]

Yesterday I received my through-the-mail signed custom booklets of Swen Nater. The Dutch-born Swen Nater played in the 70's and 80's and was a specialist in rebounding. He is the only player to have led both the ABA and NBA in rebounding.

He was never given any star status by the NBA -nor did he ever look for such a thing I think - and after a bit of high school coaching he went on to work for Costco.

I exchanged emails with him and he was ok with signing my booklets which, as I said, arrived back yesterday. He signed the Nater booklet on the front cover and the UCLA booklet on the front cover and his interior page. He also wrote a little note on the back of my accompanying letter.

Despite him not being a publicly proclaimed Legend I am very happy with this auto. Here's a scan and a video: