UcanUwill wrote:I wouldn't say being a starter doesn't mean anything in Europe. Game start strategy is still very important. I know what you are saying, in Europe the starter will not be necessarily better player then its bench counterpart, nor he will be more important. Thats especially the case with big budget super clubs, that has very deep rosters and has a luxury to start players like Rodriquez of the bench or change their starting lineups whatever they want. But on your average club, starter position still means a lot.
When I said journeymen, I probably meant that those players didn't had a strong career pedigree. They came from lesser know teams, so when I look at their names, I tend to underestimate them, they just weren't well known as some other Euro players. Barcelona is full of very well known players, They are your typical powerhouse that throws money at well established names. OLY on the other hand.... Before joining OLY, Dunston played for Cimberio Varese, Lojeski for Oostende (Belgium), Petway from Aegean B.C.,.. Darden and Lafayette had Euroleague experience prior, but they were mediocre at best.
So I really have to give OLYs general manager and coaching staff props, for finding those players and building a very sound team. Thats a very hard thing to do. I believe they are the best defensive team in the Euroleague. And when you have all those defenders do what they do, while having Spaoulis on the other end, thats a winning combination for sure.
Coaches in Euroleague are not picking starters and bench for rotation places by how good the players are. they only do that for the minutes played. They are picking starters and bench roles by how good the players play either to start the game, or coming off the bench. Like how Popovich uses Manu off the bench because he plays better coming off the bench. Something he picked up from Euroleague coaches actually and is still baffling to other NBA coaches that ask "why not start Ginobili'?
They simply use each player in the role that best fits them, which is by far more logical than saying each player must start or come off the bench just based on a strict caste system. Being a starter or not in Euroleague means absolutely nothing about how good the player is or is not.
And again, it is not the GM or coaches of Olympiacos to give credit for that, it would be their former coach Bartzokas. he is the one responsible for selecting the roster. As far as I know there is only one team in Euroleague where the GM has any say in the roster selections and that is Fenerbahce, where the GM there has a unique power along with the coach to choose players.
In every other team basically the coaches get them. In Olympiacos, the coach chooses all the players. And from what I know of Bartzokas, he was known as being the most detailed player selector in Europe and was extremely meticulous in how he selected players.
Whenever he had a position need and a player he had to select for that position, he would get a list of all the available free agents within his price range, and then he would watch every single game they played during the previous season. He would supposedly watch every game of about 250-300 players then for example of the power forward position if he needed a power forward or the small forward position if he needed a small forward, etc.
Then he would make a list of all the players he wanted at each position in order and offer them a contract, going down the list one by one. Eventually he would get to a player that would accept the contract being offered, so even if it was a 4th or 5th option, that was out of say 300 players he scouted personally over every game played in Europe, from leagues like Italy, Israel, Turkey, Belgium, Greece, D-League, Eurocup - leagues like that being chosen because of the general idea being that the players either would want to play in Olympiacos or were making low money and would not cost too much to sign.
Bartzokas is basically the greatest talent elevator and moneyball manager I have ever seen in Euroleague. He lost Pero Antic, Acie Law, Kyle Hines, Kostas Papanikolaou, Marko Keselj, Stratos Perperoglou, Martynus Gecevicius, Lazaros Papadopoulos, Andreas Glyniadakis, Michalis Pelekanos, and Georgi Shermadini to free agency basically because after Olympiacos won Euroleague championships they could not afford to keep such players and even in cases where they wanted to replace some of them with other players they could not afford replacement players at anywhere near the same contracts. So even like help players that they did not need to keep really and might have wanted to replace with better players if they had money, they lost and then had no money to replace them with anyone.
It was like they lost almost their entire team and surely almost their whole main rotation. Just Spanoulis, Sloukas, Mantzaris, Printezis was basically all they kept and their third string point guard Katsivelis. Bartzokas rebuilt their whole team with players like Petway, Dunston, Lojeski, Papapetrou, Hunter, Lafayette, Agravanis and did it with the team cutting their budget by huge amounts.
And maybe the names don't mean anything or sound big,
but Petway is not much different level wise from Antic. He's worse on offense, although he is a better shooter with more range, but Antic is a lot more skilled and complete. But Petway is much better on defense and much more athletic by many times.
Lojeski is better than Papanikolaou and I don't think that one is even very close to be honest.
Dunston is about the same level player as Hines, but in a much bigger body and so he does not get over matched so much as Hines did.
Hunter is much better than Hines is.
Lafayette is not as good as Law is as a player, not at all, but Law was only healthy and available as a player about 1/3 of a season and usually he missed all of the championship games with injuries. So it was like he was never there for the most part. Lafayette is like an iron man and never misses games and is always healthy and is very dependable, durable, reliable player.
Papapetrou is definitely nowhere close to as good as Perperoglou is, but he is much same case as someone like Hezonja. He is just a kid that is too young and overwhelmed for this level at such an age. But he has very high level talent and can be a very good player. He reminds a lot of the Greek player Michalis Kakiouzis that used to play for Barca and was for sure one of best players in Spanish League and Euroleague in his time.
Agravanis is another one same as Papapetrou and Hezonja too young for such levels, but very talented and can be a very big player in future. His physical skill and physical level is really high for a 6-10 and he should be very high in NBA mock lists if NBA scouts knew what they were doing on young talents in Europe.
So even on the gambles on the young talents that Bartzokas took, he hit home runs. I was very surprised when he resigned as Olympiacos coach that they did not keep him as talent manager, scout, elevator, make some kind of special position like that "special adviser" position for him. I guess it is because again coaches make the player choices and they wanted the new coach there to have those choices. But the team they have there could start to drop in future without him making the selections. He is clearly smartest guy in evaluating European basketball by far. He would make killer NBA GM.