Blame Rasho wrote:
Faried was playing in Mexico City for goodness sake for several years prior and is currently 36 years old… that says something about the level of play.
You can have several players so far detached from their prime and be high level players in the Euroleague.
It clearly says a lot despite what you feel about it. You want to put caveats about it, umm okay… I am
sure most people didn’t know he was even still playing just like Gallinari.
The last time I heard about Gallinari is that he was salary filler for the Murray trade and was immediately waived.
It was great that he was some Puerto Rican MVP or something but like many have said, he has not been on anyone’s radar for a while.
And what does it say, that it is worse than NBA? Sure. Faried was good NBA player who played for team USA and won gold medals... Dude is at 1% of players in the world even at this stage, he is Basketball icon.
NBA is not even 0.5% of Basketball globally, if you only care about that, sure it tells you something. Sure even second best league is way less talented than the NBA, this is not news. You know how good NBA is, to most countries just having guy drafted would be amazing. I am a fan of Basketball, and I see very very good players every day who never were good enough to even get Euroleague contract, and I still consider them very good. Ignas Sargiūnas just made Basketball history, got global attention, he also shoots over 50% from 3 on his team, he never played in Euroleague, maybe never will. I follow Europe hoops and Euroleague is white whale to most of the players, and 95% of them will never reach that, and a lot of them are still very good. When watching National teams, even top NAtional teams considering, like Italy and Lithuania, we look at guys with ''Euroelague and NBA experience'', because that is still big achievement ever making any of these two leagues.
Faried also got very lucky as I said, he fit perfectly. Most washed NBA players do way worse, Kemba Walker was absolutely terrible in Monaco few years back for eaxmple. If anything, this just says a lot about Faried that he can still do this. To just get PAO contract is big, its a top 35 team in the world, for most players it would be achievement of a lifetime, but as I said Faried was winning gold medals with team USA. I was hoping my countrymen Marek, who dominates Turkish league now and was starting games for Lithuania in the Eurobasket over Jonas Valančiūnas would get this chance, but he still didn't. I was very surprised Faried performed this well, I did not have huge expectations of him at this age, I thought he was washed too, but dude killed it, it is probably not sustainable, and main PAO centers should come back at one point, but it tells a lot about a guy who can just join a team randomly and perform from day one.



















