xprt wrote:I am not fan of Spanoulis but 270 minutes of basketball is clearly to little of a game time to adjust and say he cant play in NBA especially for PG who need teammates to trust him. For example Ty Lawson during lockout came to Europe play basketball and he was looking pretty bad was been outplayed by his teammate pg, opponent pg's but guy clearly needed time to make adjustment to European basketball. Same could have been with Spanoulis though as I said I am not fan of his and wouldnt like Raptors to sign him.
Surely, specific stats are too much to look at and many players start from a lower level of performance and take an adjustment upwards. The conversation we're having was spawned when I said he was effectively useless and someone called that the most ignorant post of the year, remember.
Spanoulis might have, in time, turned into a more effective guard, but I doubt that. Remember, he had a reputation as a dribble penetrator who generated shots at the rim and finished well once he got there, but he didn't have the prerequisite athleticism to ever do that at an elite level in the NBA. Hell, even some of our elite PG athletes can't do that. He wasn't an elite 3pt shooter in the Euroleague, or in the Greek League. Hell, this year, he shot under 40% in both the Euroleague AND the Greek League, that's across 64 combined games, and wholly unimpressive from downtown, as has been the historical trend.
There's very little to suggest his shooting would have gotten a lot better and there's a lot to suggest that he benefited heavily from the significant differences between the two leagues, especially given the athleticism he didn't possess BEFORE he turned 30.
Spanoulis was never going to be an elite player, but he moped like a prima donna after a performance that was probably a lot closer to the level at which he'd eventually normalize than any kind of seriously valuable production.
