lambchop wrote:UcanUwill wrote:lambchop wrote:
They still had Rudy making timely shots and, of course, Lorenzo Brown. There's no denying Brown carried that team and masked many of its flaws.
Spain has become terrible at developing its own talent. They simply don't develop pros. There's a difference between winning meaningless youth tournaments and actually churning out pro level shooters, ball handlers, scorers etc.
In addition, like I've said before, it's extremely tough to transition to the Spanish 1st league as a young player. Any advantages youth players worked for are lost after even just one season of men's basketball, because they're French, German, Serbian, even Georgian counterparts are getting 15 mpg in a competitive pro league, while the Spaniards either rot on the bench play in their beloved LEB ORO which according to them is "just as good, if not better than other European first leagues, trust me, tío".
Seems like spanish programs do develop pros, but they got too big for their own good, and teams like Barca and Real do not develop Spanish players, but rather just top talents from all around the globe, domestic talent started to be an afterthought almost. Those teams developed some really good players, but they rarely Spnnish these days.
While what you're saying isn't wrong, my impression is that they recruit guys who are top level talents anyway. Still, very few ever crack the rotation of the 1st team. But, given that they're head and shoulders above pretty much all of their peers, it doesn't matter that they're only playing in Spain's 4th division.
MEGA Belgrade is one of the few teams that takes largely unknown players and guys who were rejected by other teams and then turns them into pros. Jokic, Zubac, Bitadze, Luwawu-Cabarrot etc. weren't highly sought after before they joined MEGA. In fact JoVic wasn't even on Serbian youth national teams before he joined them.
Ulm is somewhat comparable in how they get players ready one year ahead of the draft. But, similar to Madrid and Barcelona, those are usually guys who are already on most NBA radars and mock drafts.
What Mega and Ulm does is amazing, they are complete outlier. Most Euro teams are more concerned with NBA buyout money and not real development, just pump the NBA lottery buzz, hide your guy from top players if he sucks, we only try to get paid not to make the guy better. Sadly, that is what a lot of teams do, we had quite a few guys who made NBA before they cracked Euro rotation, not surprisingly, most of these guys were huge busts, but hey, idiot NBA GMs still buy the idea that they are the ones that will turn Euro scrub into NBA star, and buyout money for Euros is just the same if the guy next NBA MVP or next Sekou Doumbaya, Euros are not concerned at all, the guy leaves at age 19 anyway.
