RealGM

Lefteris is the next great Greek hope, a 6'9 SF/PF with nice all around skill set, and a very good 3pt shooter. He is 17 y/o and is getting major minutes in the Greek league/eurocup. He has nice potential as a stretch 4 who can also play D. I believe that we will hear his name a lot on the next years.

Here a detailed scouting report of him

https://id-prospects.com/lefteris-mantzoukas-scouting-report/

I mentioned his name as an upcoming talent in Europe on the Bucks board, and you replied with something like it is a good laugh for you and your friends and implied I was trolling............

I started a thread on him here awhile back,

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1882800

and there didn't seem to be anyone that thought anything of him. He seems to be flying under the radar for some reason. But he's like a high school junior in the USA, and he's already a solid EuroCup player, while he's absolutely destroying youth competitions. He had a 65 PIR game in the EuroLeague Under-18 tournament at age 16.

49 points and 19 rebounds against Alba Berlin's under-18 team

https://www.eurocupbasketball.com/eurocup/games/results/showgame?gamecode=7&seasoncode=JTM19#!boxscore

He sort of reminds me of a young Mirotic. Very similar play style and attributes. He's not quite as big as Mirotic, but he seems to be quite a bit more physical and stronger than Mirotic.

All things considered, he's currently the best player in Europe in his age class. Once again, it feels like NBA related media seems to have a bias against certain European players, and often Greek ones. If this guy was Spanish, or especially French, there would be hype about him already in the USA, since at the age of a high school junior, he's already contributing in EuroCup. But he's Greek, and it's almost total crickets about him in the US. Which is something that always seems to be the case with any Greek player, no matter how good they are.

The NBA didn't even know who Giannis was, until just some months before he was drafted. But with players like Mantzoukas, it's very odd that they would have almost zero discussion in the US, despite playing in one of the second level pan European leagues. Any young French player that gets any playing time in something like the EuroCup, is basically automatically put in the top 5-10 picks on future mock drafts. There is really no explainable reason for why Mantzoukas would be any different, other than the obvious bias and favorites the NBA plays based on nationalities.

If a 17 year old French player had a game like this in the EuroCup (against a Spanish ACB team), you better believe that there would instantly be hype about him in US sports media. Avdija (Israel) was getting big hype early on in US sports media, without having any games even close to that good in a European league.

https://www.eurocupbasketball.com/eurocup/games/results/showgame?gamecode=71&seasoncode=U2020#!boxscore

Here is where Mantzoukas (at high school sophomore age) had a 41 point game against Real Madrid's under-16 team, which is considered to be the best youth team in Europe, with numerous "NBA prospects" on it.



Here is where Mantzoukas (at high school junior age) had a 24 point game in the EuroCup (second European league), against a team from Spain's ACB league:



Again, why there is no talk of him in US sports media seems quite odd. If someone like Garuba has a game like that against an ACB team, at that age, right away they are being talked about in US sports media as a possible top 5 draft pick.