Crunch 99 wrote:Taikuri wrote:Something funny about that game. All of the Finnish point guards except the 4th point guard didn't play or were injured. So sometimes Finland put Lauri playing point guard. The lack of point guards certainly made the game closer than it should've been.
I got a feeling that Lauri will score 35-40 points (FIBA has 4x10 min quarters) in multiple games in the World Cup and he might even be the best individual of the entire tournament at the end (he kind of was that in the Eurobasket). However he won't get any awards for that, unless Finland surprises and advances very deep in the tournament.
I haven't heard anyone giving Finland a chance for a medal, but I will be rooting for them to get one. You believe the Finnish team is better than last summer, correct? I am probably overlooking players, but I can't think of a bigger headliner name than Markkanen besides Doncic. The USA team has a lot of potential tournament stars, but USA might shift the scoring to different players from game to game.
Every team will be ready for Lauri, but in the Lithuania game highlights, he looked unstoppable at the three point line. Lauri wasn't simply relying on others passing him the ball when he was open to take a shot; he was getting the ball while covered, and then creating just enough space to shoot over the top to hit contested threes.
In my opinion it's the best roster Finland has ever had, but I'm not dreaming about a medal now because there are some problems. Finland had only 4 practice games, which is a very small amount compared to many other teams. For example Lithuania played/plays over 10 games. Finland didn't have a full roster in any of these practice games due to injuries. The biggest problem is the point guard position. Each of the 3 main point guards have had injuries or recovery from a surgery during these 4 practice matches.
My expectation currently is that Finland will not make it out of this group. This group is the second hardest group of the tournament, hardest being the one that has Latvia, Canada and France. However anything can happen and Finland had some poor practice games before last summer's Eurobasket as well and it lead to a historic result, where Finland was top-8 in Eurobasket and Finland wasn't that far from beating Spain in the playoffs. Spain became the European champion in that tournament. Back then Finland was leading them by 15 points in that game, but team Finland managed to blow that lead.
So Finland has to upset Australia, which is a top-3 country in the World according to FIBA ranking or Germany, which is actually the group favorite, even over Australia. Then the 3rd team isn't easy either, Japan, which is a host country so they are backed up by a fanatic crowd and I believe that they have few NBA players as well. At least one NBA guy. I expect Finland to beat Japan though, but in order to make top-2, have to beat Australia or Germany. Australia didn't impress in the last practice match where they lost to Brazil, I think yesterday, so there's that. Anything can happen, so we'll just have to watch the games.
There's more stuff on the line as well. The tournament continues even after being eliminated from the playoffs and winning games after that can mean making it into Olympic qualification tournament.
To me in FIBA games and rules, Lauri is a Doncic level player. In NBA Doncic is ahead of him. Lauri might indeed be the best player of that World Cup. He was an absolute beast in the last Eurobasket. He didn't get enough credit for what he did there.
. Luckily i found a different stream but that's annoying.