History

You are here: Home > History

This month, January 2008, EuroSlam celebrates its' 5th anniversary.

January 2003, it was only a few months earlier that owner and founder Giorgio Marrale played in another online league called UBL and started developing a few features for it, including the script to submit statistics that is still used today. Eventually that league stopped existing, but Giorgio a.k.a. G-Force was very excited to play his favorite game over the Internet, so he founded EuroSlam.

Many evenings and long nights of hard work resulted in the first European NBA Live League, given the opportunity for fellow Europeans to play EA Sports' NBA Live with less lag, since lag was unavoidable when playing games with players located in the United States back then.

Of course EuroSlam was nothing compared to what it has become, in fact Giorgio learned most of his programming skills developing the site and league engine during the years.

Anyway, the first season is still fresh in the memories of many. It was the best ever... players became friends and today's legends were born. Unfortunately it never became that good again. We even had our own EuroSlam slang, introduced by Siggoroso and Tony Soprano, both legendary names from the past. It was a "mafious" period!

Here are a few names I recall from the past:

  • Siggoroso (Received the Most Mafious Player award, unfortunately he retired after season 1.)
  • Ivangiletto (Early member and creator of the famous NBA Live Patch.)
  • Miketheslummy (Winner of season 1 and founder of NBAIL, yet another league inspired by EuroSlam.)
  • Vetal (The one with many second chances, but matured and is still playing these days.)
  • Guille (Won just one game, but finished the entire season.)
  • Damnation (Still a member and became a good friend as well, many fear his alter ego. EuroSlam would not be where it is without him!)
  • Vyger (I haven't met many members as loyal as he is. He's now the commissioner of EuroSlam Italy and organized a EuroSlam get together in Rome, 2006.)

Have a look at what EuroSlam innitially looked like:

So after a stunning first season history continued. EuroSlam grew as an International community for NBA Live enthusiasts and eventually we even had seven different leagues for different continents and countries.

  • Serie A (Europe div. I)
  • EDL EuroSlam Development League (Europe div. II)
  • EuroSlam Italy
  • Stars and Stripes (USA and Canada)
  • EuroSlam Estonia
  • EuroSlam Hungary
  • EuroSlam Slovenia
  • Sunset League (South America)

During the years, many players have signed up and disappeared in silence, but we also have some remarkable names joining the league. It wasn't until 2006 that Kurt Jonke, a.k.a. Desdope joined EuroSlam Serie A, one crazy guy from Austria who showed everybody what a dedicated member should look like. His recaps were amazing, sometimes it was just too much to read (kidding there buddy), but always put together with a great amount of care. He became commissioner G-Force's right hand and co-host of the legendary EuroSlam Radio Show. Unfortunately he's no longer an active member due to his time consuming job, but Giorgio and Kurt became close friends and still speak to each other weekly. One of the best things they produced together must be their hilarious Christmas song:

Henrik Latinen, who was known to the public as BigDog, was our statistical guy. He joined the league in its' second season and was the master behind the best roster in the world based on real time statistics. Players in the game reflected players in the NBA, if your player wasn't hot in real life, he wasn't hot in the EuroSlam league. This was a unique and time consuming system, but most definitely the best I have seen so far. BigDog is still around and I have a gut feeling that he'll be back in EuroSlam soon.

Surely more names can be written and should definitely not be forgotten in time. So, please contact us if you believe your name should be part of EuroSlam's history!

Now a days, EuroSlam is back to basic. It was hard to keep all leagues active and its' members satisfied. Only Luca (Vyger) succeeded in making EuroSlam Italy a long lasting success! Even Serie A, which used to be the flag ship, slowly bled to death with the absence of commissioner Giorgio, who became a father of a lovely son named Mauro in real life. Let's call his absence a sabbatical, because he came back and injected live back into it.

October 2007, there were two possibilities... shut down Serie A and leave EuroSlam Italy for what it is, or put in a significant amount of work and re-vibe the whole site... and that's just what happened. EuroSlam version 2 was released nearly three months later and about five years after it was founded. Another era of NBA Live starts now!

To be continued...