Mirotic12 wrote:Charm wrote:Not saying he was an unknown, just saying he wasn't as far along in his development as Sengun is at age 18. There's a big difference between dominating high school basketball and dominating a professional league.
That's the crux of the argument for Sengun. There've been a lot of highly skilled bigs in the draft, but very few of them were so accomplished at such a young age. If you buy youth + productivity + level of competition as a rough barometer for NBA potential, Sengun passes that test better than any frontcourt prospect not named Anthony Davis or Zion Williamson.
Sengun didn't dominate in the Turkish League. He was certainly very good, "domination" is a definite exaggeration. In proper context, he was tremendous for his age, and he put up very good numbers for a joke of a team, in a league that is OK level.
The ridiculous NBA marketing hype BS that these US sports media articles and draft write ups have in them, like "Turkish League is the best or second best league in Europe" and "Besiktas held their own with the league's EuroLeague teams", etc. is 100% pure fantasy made up nonsense.
There are plenty of players in Europe that could put up even better numbers on such a team. While Sengun would have just been another role player on a big EuroLeague club. "Domination" implies he was Jokic of Europe or something, which is far from reality. The true accurate description of his current level in European pro club basketball is that he is certainly very, very good good
for his age.
I agree that it's hard for a lot of Americans to wrap their head around how good Efes in particular is. There's about a half dozen NBA teams they'd probably be favored against. Therefore I agree it's a little funny to say that a non-Efes player "dominated" the league. Efes is going to win the championship without breaking a sweat. That said, it was very encouraging to see Sengun adjust and figure out how to create *something* against Efes over the course of the 3-game sweep.
I agree that Sengun's domination, while superficially similar (i.e. looking at counting stats) to Luka's domination, is actually nothing alike. Lower level of competition, of course, but also the degree of pressure Luka faced as a teenager leading Real Madrid was phenomenal. I don't expect that I'll ever see another NBA prospect on Luka's level.
I disagree that the rest of the Turkish league is a joke. Fener, Karsiyaka, Tofas, and Besiktas would all be playoff teams in Italy, or in VTB, or in the Adriatic. They all have multiple players who're good enough to be on NBA rosters without any projected improvement. Sengun's big game against Tofas Overall, the competition Sengun faced was at least on par with what Jokic faced, and he was by any measure more successful than Jokic was at the same age (2013-14 season).
Perhaps more importantly, the competition Sengun faced was at least on par with major-conference NCAA competition. In other words, if Sengun had been an NCAA freshman instead, he probably would've put up similar numbers (and that may be a conservative estimate, because you know, there are no Efes's in the NCAA). He very likely would've pushed past Garza for the Wooden Award, and on a decent team he very likely would've won the championship too. Do you disagree?
