kimblr.com

Travis Hansen isn’t the Ugly American in Russia.
Playing basketball for Moscow’s Dynamo, one of the top teams in the European League, Hansen, his wife, LaRee, and 5-year-old son, Ryder, have made a significant impact in the part of the world that was once considered enemy territory, a place where spies seemingly lurked at every turn in a country deemed the “evil empire” during the Cold War.
No, Hansen is representing his American heritage very well. So respected is Hansen that, in a rare act that usually takes years, Russian President Vladimir Putin personally signed papers establishing the former Mountain View High and BYU star as a nationalized Russian citizen, granting him a Russian passport.
Along with former Bucknell point guard J.R. Holden, Hansen is only the third American basketball player to be given dual citizenship status by the former Soviet Republic.
This opens the door for Hansen to play alongside Jazzman Andrei Kirilenko on the Russian Olympic team in China this summer — if he chooses to or is invited. Hansen has already had talks with the Russian Olympic coach, who told him he might have to give up his short off-season, cut his vacation trip to Lake Powell and Utah short, and be prepared to train for the China Olympics.
“It’s a lifetime dream of every basketball player to be an Olympian,” said Hansen, whose Dynamo team just finished in the top three of the 54-team European League championships in Italy. “It’s exciting. We’ll have to see what happens.”
Hansen was the 37th pick in the 2003 NBA Draft, a second-rounder to Atlanta, 14 picks before New Jersey drafted current Utah Jazz shooting guard Kyle Korver out of Creighton University.
Hansen and Houston Rockets rookie Luis Scola were teammates in Spain a few years ago. Scola’s wife and daughter will stay with LaRee — who just returned from Russia on Sunday — when the Rockets come to Utah for Games 3 and 4 in their first-round playoff series against the Jazz.

deseretnews.com

Washington, D.C. (March 13, 2008) — DIRECTV said today that its ‘Mega March Madness’ package will offer 37 NCAA college basketball tournament games in High-Definition.
The package, which will cost $69, will also feature several interactive enhancements including on-screen access to statistics, and scores of other games during the HD broadcast. (The high-def broadcasts will not cost extra.)
This year’s tournament, which will be produced again by CBS Sports, will start with round one on March 20.
DIRECTV’s package includes coverage of the first three rounds of the tournament. While there will be more than 37 games during the first three rounds, the pay package will only include ‘out-of-market’ games not broadcast on viewers’ local channels.
“ While other providers may be content to show highlights, DIRECTV is offering fans exclusive access to up to 37 live games from the first three rounds of the tournament, and this year, all of the games are in HD.," said DIRECTV executive vice president Eric Shanks.

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