Unlike in Charleroi the day before-- where we got to take a glance at the intriguing Nemanja Bjelica, who came out of absolute nowhere-- there would be no unknown NBA prospects on the floor this time around. Olimpiacos is arguably the richest team in the world outside of the NBA, sporting a deep and expensive roster filled to the brim with NBA caliber talent. Four former draft picks are present—Josh Childress (2004), Yotam Halperin (2006), Giorgos Printezis (2007) and Sofoklis Schortsanitis (2003), alongside numerous players who either played, could be playing or would have made it to the NBA in their prime had they shown more interest—including Theodoros Papaloukas, Nikola Vujcic, Lynn Greer and Yiannis Bouroussis.
A note in the game program that evening told the story perfectly about the difference between Le Mans Sarthe Basket and Olympiacos Piraeus—“1 Childress= 3 MSB!” Meaning that Josh Childress’ salary of 6.67 million dollars is equal to approximately three times Le Mans’ entire roster budget (1.8 million Euros).
Even though there were two draft-eligible players here who at least have a chance at being picked someday—big point guards Antoine Diot and Milos Teodosic, it was Josh Childress who we were most interested in seeing play.
The Childress experiment has been fascinating to say the least so far. Can an important NBA player adjust himself to European basketball and justify a ridiculous salary, and will additional NBA players follow him over in the future?
So far, it seems way too early to judge still.
Olimpiacos’ head coach Giannakis was not kidding he said “we did not bring Josh here to score 40, 30 or 50 points,” as he told ESPN after he landed. In fact, Childress is not even scoring 20, or even 10 points per game in the Euroleague—he’s at 9.8 points in 27 minutes per game, which is the lowest scoring output he’s produced since his freshman year at Stanford. His field goal percentage is also at a career low thus far (since college at least), and he’s shooting an incredibly poor percentage from the free throw line (53%) and 3-point range (14%) as well.
Needless to say, high-level European basketball requires quite a bit of adjusting to, even for an incredibly smart and versatile talent like Childress.
Need more evidence? Childress is so far turning the ball over on 1/4th of his possessions, far more than he’s ever averaged in his career (last season 16%, the year before 14%). Clearly he’s having a hard time with the incredibly crowded paint that European basketball is known for, and possibly his role on the team or the expectations, and he’s getting very few calls from stingy refs to help him with that transition.
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