Question for International Basketball fans. Who are top prospects from your country?

[brutalitops]

Dysons younger brother

We do have a few ok prospects, Condon who players for Florida might be picked up in 2026 first round, Roman Siulepa has a little way to go in terms of BBIQ and learning the game but he;s an absolute athlete

We do have Jong Mach who might get into the NBA at some point, Dont know if he's still in perth but he was about 7'2" at 15

[peZt]

Turkey

Unfortunately, there arent really any turkish NBA prospects on the horizon. We had a stretch in the 2010s where we won basically every single youth medal there was in the u16-u20 categories and everybody thought a turkish golden generation was coming. But almost none of them reached their potential or rather they didnt have as much potential as we had hoped. We thought we would have our superstar SG in Furkan Korkmaz, but dude ended up being a shooting guard who can't shoot or defend. We thought we'd have the next Ricky Rubio in Kenan Sipahi but dude ended up being average. We thought we would have the next great turkish center in Ömer Faruk Yurtseven but I dont even know where he plays rn. Okben Ulubay was heralded as the next great point forward after Hedo Turkoglu, but it turned out he was 1 year older than advertised and then just stopped developing.

I think Alperen Sengün and Adem Bona have been the last turkish NBA level prospects for a while.

But other than that our best talents are probably:

Omer Kutluay - 2009 - SG - Is the son of our best SG ever (Ibrahim Kutluay). This could be a NBA prospect IF his body develops. He has all the skills needed, great shooter, great midrange, great playmaking for a SG, but is small, not very athletic and doesnt have a big frame. A shame really, as his dad for example had a perfect body for an SG. Basically a rich mans version of Furkan Korkmaz minus the body atm
This is him at 15

Spoiler:

Watch on YouTube

Melih Tunca - 2005 - PG - Will now play at Penn State in the upcoming season. Probably not NBA level, but could become good Euroleague level player.


Other than that we have a bunch of players that could become solid Euroleague Level players, including:

Ömer Ege Ziyayettin - 2008 - Guard
Berke Büyüktüncel - 2004 - PF - Plays at Nebraska
Kaan Onat - 2007 - SG
Derin Can Üstün - 2007 PG

And thats pretty much it. The others are already 23+, or are under 16 and its hard to tell what their true potential is other than an outlier like Ömer Kutluay.

[-Luke-]

Any Germans being sent to the US that has potential? Particularly those eligible for the 27 draft?

You want the Magic sign the entire German national team, eh?

Three young big men from Germany are coming over this summer. Hannes Steinbach (Washington), Johann Grünloh (Virginia) and Eric Reibe (UConn). Givony had Steinbach as a late first in 2026 in the mock draft I saw. Reibe will probably play multiple years at UConn. Not sure about Grünloh.

Steinbach is from *drum roll* Würzburg. The same home town as Dirk and Maxi Kleber.

[GSWFan1994]

Brazil have Mathias Alessanco Vasquez, a 17yo 6'9 SF playing in Spain and that already visited Texas and Michigan. If he keeps progressing at the current rate he´s a lock for a Top 10 pick.

As lesser prospects we also have Samis Calderon, a rookie playing for Kansas and Eduardo Klafke, who´ll be a sophmore for Ole Miss.

I'm not up to date with the latest brazilian collection of talent, but it seems to me that that's a far cry from the days of Nenê, Leandrinho, Splitter and Varejão all at the same time playing in the NBA...

Cheers Barba, my friend, hope you're doing well over there!

[RookieStar]

Any Germans being sent to the US that has potential? Particularly those eligible for the 27 draft?

You want the Magic sign the entire German national team, eh?

Three young big men from Germany are coming over this summer. Hannes Steinbach (Washington), Johann Grünloh (Virginia) and Eric Reibe (UConn). Givony had Steinbach as a late first in 2026 in the mock draft I saw. Reibe will probably play multiple years at UConn. Not sure about Grünloh.

Steinbach is from *drum roll* Würzburg. The same home town as Dirk and Maxi Kleber.

Let's face it. We practically draft Michigan or German players lately.lol

Might as well narrow down our research.

And yes... In the recent U19... We were there for Reibe but we stayed for Steinbach ( if you know what I mean)

[Pachinko_]

Outside of Giannis, seems like Greece never had players who would make or be successful in the NBA, do you think there is nothing to that, or there is something that just does not make greeks that much suited for NBA game?

I still talk to a few basketball people in Greece, including a couple of youth coaches, and they don't even watch NBA. They're totally absorbed and tuned in to the Oly-Pana rivalry and the Euroleague.

I remember years ago I posted some peak Golden State highlights in a Greek forum, showing Steph and Klay going nuts, and the comments I got underneath was "why do they play like that? Don't they have a coach?"

Greece is a different world, basketball is fully dominated by the coach. System-system-system.
It's clearly reflected in our youth national teams: players don't create individually, it's almost frowned upon to just take the ball and create or even shoot from a long distance unless completely wide open. Instead they keep moving ball and bodies patiently as a team trying to find the open man. Their game is almost choreographed, look up this word and you'll see what I mean.

Which is fine in many ways, it teaches solid team fundamentals, but this kind of mentality in youth basketball will never produce the kind of player that you are looking for in a thread like this one. We all love to make fun of the AAU, I do too, but the AAU has one significant upside: it teaches individual offensive creativity like nothing else: keep giving the ball the ball to "the guy", step aside, and let him score 50. Well, that player might end up being a crap team player, but at least he will definitely know how to take the ball and create. Greeks players don't, they don't learn it.

In Euroleague teams, creativity is subcontracted to a couple of imported players, typically dominant scorers who didn't fit in the NBA for whatever reason. The rest is role players, sometimes good role players, which is what the Greek basketball youth system is aiming to produce: good role players that fit into the systems of their Euro teams. It's very hard for a talented kid to escape this situation unless he's a total pterodactyl like Giannis. And we just don't have the gene pool to produce a Giannis again.

Greeks seem happy with this situation, so it's all good I guess

[hyper316]

Canada considered as international right?

[Pachinko_]

Australian youth basketball is the exact opposite to Greece: all they care about is producing NCAA-ready and NBA-ready talent.

They have this high school in Canberra where NBA assistant coaches teach the American game, and pretty much every notable Aussie hooper you've ever heard of has been funelled through there. They then ship their most talented kids off to America to become stars, in the hopes that one day they will return and lead the national team to an Olympic medal. Maybe even beat Team USA. That's the hope. And to be fair these guys do come back religiously almost every summer to play for the Boomers, but you need many stars to align to get on the podium in the Olympics.

It's a good way to do it, but it leaves Australian basketball with one big problem: they don't really have a competitive local league. There is no Euroleague in Australia, no international club league to speak of, the best local talent leaves the country by the time they're 18, and as a result peoples' interest in the local league is usually fairly limited to a few die hard hoop fans. Which then causes money to dry up, which makes the league even less interesting. It's kind of a vicious circle that many countries suffer from but at least it produces a strong NT with legit NBA talent.

It's a trade-off.
I like it.
Go Boomers.

By the way Boomers is a really funny for a country that suffers from a generational property bubble and young people can't buy a house no matter what.

[Pachinko_]

Canada considered as international right?

I guess so.
Personally I don't give a **** about about birthplaces and passports, I only care about systems that produce talent. In that context, what makes Canada basketball interesting and distinct from US basketball is that Canada seems to have developed their own tailored methods of producing talent, they didn't simply piggy-back off the US system. I don't have too many details but I remember reading an article about it.

It's interesting to see how it paid off for the Canadians because they've clearly done some good work, spitting out some big names over time.
If anyone is familiar with their youth systems and junior NTs I'd like to learn more about what they did that worked so well.

[BarbaGrizz]

Brazil have Mathias Alessanco Vasquez, a 17yo 6'9 SF playing in Spain and that already visited Texas and Michigan. If he keeps progressing at the current rate he´s a lock for a Top 10 pick.

As lesser prospects we also have Samis Calderon, a rookie playing for Kansas and Eduardo Klafke, who´ll be a sophmore for Ole Miss.

I'm not up to date with the latest brazilian collection of talent, but it seems to me that that's a far cry from the days of Nenê, Leandrinho, Splitter and Varejão all at the same time playing in the NBA...

Cheers Barba, my friend, hope you're doing well over there!

Not saying he´ll be better than our legends, but at his age not even Splitter compares to him. We really need someone like him in our NT! Cheers my friend!

[Mirotic12]

I still talk to a few basketball people in Greece, including a couple of youth coaches, and they don't even watch NBA. They're totally absorbed and tuned in to the Oly-Pana rivalry and the Euroleague.

I remember years ago I posted some peak Golden State highlights in a Greek forum, showing Steph and Klay going nuts, and the comments I got underneath was "why do they play like that? Don't they have a coach?"

Greece is a different world, basketball is fully dominated by the coach. System-system-system.
It's clearly reflected in our youth national teams: players don't create individually, it's almost frowned upon to just take the ball and create or even shoot from a long distance unless completely wide open. Instead they keep moving ball and bodies patiently as a team trying to find the open man. Their game is almost choreographed, look up this word and you'll see what I mean.

Which is fine in many ways, it teaches solid team fundamentals, but this kind of mentality in youth basketball will never produce the kind of player that you are looking for in a thread like this one. We all love to make fun of the AAU, I do too, but the AAU has one significant upside: it teaches individual offensive creativity like nothing else: keep giving the ball the ball to "the guy", step aside, and let him score 50. Well, that player might end up being a crap team player, but at least he will definitely know how to take the ball and create. Greeks players don't, they don't learn it.

In Euroleague teams, creativity is subcontracted to a couple of imported players, typically dominant scorers who didn't fit in the NBA for whatever reason. The rest is role players, sometimes good role players, which is what the Greek basketball youth system is aiming to produce: good role players that fit into the systems of their Euro teams. It's very hard for a talented kid to escape this situation unless he's a total pterodactyl like Giannis. And we just don't have the gene pool to produce a Giannis again.

Greeks seem happy with this situation, so it's all good I guess

Spanoulis and Giannakis didn't fit that player prototype or criteria at all. Even though what you say is generally true, and that's how they were trained and developed, they still became individually creative scorers, play makers and one on one players.

Zisis as well, but unfortunately, after Varejao hit him, he was never the same. So we only saw his real potential when he was very young.

The point being, invidually gifted and talented players will develop their own indivdual scoring prowess and creativity regardless of if they are being developed in such strenuous systems or not.

It just makes it to where only once in a generation type players will do so. Greece still was able to develop two such players at the same time (Spanoulis and Zisis), but that injury really derailed Zisis' career.

[brutalitops]

Australian youth basketball is the exact opposite to Greece: all they care about is producing NCAA-ready and NBA-ready talent.

They have this high school in Canberra where NBA assistant coaches teach the American game, and pretty much every notable Aussie hooper you've ever heard of has been funelled through there. They then ship their most talented kids off to America to become stars, in the hopes that one day they will return and lead the national team to an Olympic medal. Maybe even beat Team USA. That's the hope. And to be fair these guys do come back religiously almost every summer to play for the Boomers, but you need many stars to align to get on the podium in the Olympics.

It's a good way to do it, but it leaves Australian basketball with one big problem: they don't really have a competitive local league. There is no Euroleague in Australia, no international club league to speak of, the best local talent leaves the country by the time they're 18, and as a result peoples' interest in the local league is usually fairly limited to a few die hard hoop fans. Which then causes money to dry up, which makes the league even less interesting. It's kind of a vicious circle that many countries suffer from but at least it produces a strong NT with legit NBA talent.

It's a trade-off.
I like it.
Go Boomers.

By the way Boomers is a really funny for a country that suffers from a generational property bubble and young people can't buy a house no matter what.

Behind the scenes there is a lot of re-structuring of the grassroots leagues, about 5 years ago they finally got a decent semi-pro league, in WA I know they are going to expand soon, with another metro/ish team and looking regional, the redbacks recently played a game in Albany and with no advertising or push they got over 1000 people to go.

And I think the way forward is developing a heap of players, we've always produced good basketball talent and had the culture, pathways however have been you needed to be ultra talented to get to the institute fo have a chance at college. Nowadays a lot of teams have connections to a heap of D2/3/4 college teams and there is a lot better pathways to become a professional.

[AleksandarN]

Serbia was always a powerhouse, they had two major down years in 2005 and 2006, but then they retooled around Teodosic generation and were instantly great. I would also call Germany a current powerhouse, no one would want to paly them and they are world champions. Australia would be in my top 5 also.

Serbia was power house in the 2000s

Serbia's national team didn't really start until 2007.

FR Yugoslavia was a power in the early 2000s. Regardless though, it wasn't the same team as Serbia's current national team.

I know every Serbian basketball fan claims it's the same team, but it really wasn't.

Former Serbia/Montenegro team consisted of 95 percent Serbs and so was the coaches. So yes Serbia was a power house in the 2000s not just the players but the trainers and coaches. They have the best coaches and had the players . So yes Serbia was a powerhouse in 2000s

[UcanUwill]

Outside of Giannis, seems like Greece never had players who would make or be successful in the NBA, do you think there is nothing to that, or there is something that just does not make greeks that much suited for NBA game?

I still talk to a few basketball people in Greece, including a couple of youth coaches, and they don't even watch NBA. They're totally absorbed and tuned in to the Oly-Pana rivalry and the Euroleague.

I remember years ago I posted some peak Golden State highlights in a Greek forum, showing Steph and Klay going nuts, and the comments I got underneath was "why do they play like that? Don't they have a coach?"

Greece is a different world, basketball is fully dominated by the coach. System-system-system.
It's clearly reflected in our youth national teams: players don't create individually, it's almost frowned upon to just take the ball and create or even shoot from a long distance unless completely wide open. Instead they keep moving ball and bodies patiently as a team trying to find the open man. Their game is almost choreographed, look up this word and you'll see what I mean.

Which is fine in many ways, it teaches solid team fundamentals, but this kind of mentality in youth basketball will never produce the kind of player that you are looking for in a thread like this one. We all love to make fun of the AAU, I do too, but the AAU has one significant upside: it teaches individual offensive creativity like nothing else: keep giving the ball the ball to "the guy", step aside, and let him score 50. Well, that player might end up being a crap team player, but at least he will definitely know how to take the ball and create. Greeks players don't, they don't learn it.

In Euroleague teams, creativity is subcontracted to a couple of imported players, typically dominant scorers who didn't fit in the NBA for whatever reason. The rest is role players, sometimes good role players, which is what the Greek basketball youth system is aiming to produce: good role players that fit into the systems of their Euro teams. It's very hard for a talented kid to escape this situation unless he's a total pterodactyl like Giannis. And we just don't have the gene pool to produce a Giannis again.

Greeks seem happy with this situation, so it's all good I guess

I think it is the same in Lithuania here. I think all Euro countries that have strong domestic basketball tradition are more like that, where France or Germany for example, Basketball is getting more popular there, but it is not really because of local teams, and thats why they develop NBA talent way better now. I think countries like Greece and Lithuania need to look in the mirror and realize that what they are doing is outdated, because we being left in a dust.

We love coaches who overcoach, thats why everyone think Jaskikevicius so god, it is actually emberassing the Jasikevicius love fest our media has, if you undercoahcing coach, people here think you suck, you UNDER coaching, you doing bad. Most guards who develop here can't even really dribble. I do not think anymore can trash talk AAU, when almost every basektball club in the world has American guard thats their offensive leader. For some reason, Americans develop unlimited number of these type of players. Guy like Spanoulis was almost anomaly, because you wouldn't see a guy with such good handle, ability to split any double and get anywhere around the court with his individual skills coming out of these countries. I will say that Greece is still way better than Lithuania at this regard, because you guys still had Spanoulis, SLoukas etc, we on the other hand have nothing of sorts.
Our best 1 on 1 player ever was probably Šiškauskas, almost 20 years ago now, and he was anomaly, because he started playing basketball at like 17 years old, he just was natural talent, not our real product.

That said, I have been watching U20 that just ended on Sunday, and maybe some changes are being made, because that Lithuanian team had many drivers on a team, problem with these guys, they couldn't finish in the paint at all, but at least we saw guys with handle who were not afraid to attack the basket faced up. We had this guy Čižauskas from 92 generation, and many doofuses thought he is next big thing, I said it at a time, I debated these fools back in 2011 over here, this guy is most obvious bust I have ever seen, He was literally a PG, our big next hope, who literally couldn't dribble when pressed, it was freaking unbelievable. It is really insane how we develop guards, nobody can do anything without a screen action.

[UcanUwill]

Brazil have Mathias Alessanco Vasquez, a 17yo 6'9 SF playing in Spain and that already visited Texas and Michigan. If he keeps progressing at the current rate he´s a lock for a Top 10 pick.

As lesser prospects we also have Samis Calderon, a rookie playing for Kansas and Eduardo Klafke, who´ll be a sophmore for Ole Miss.

I'm not up to date with the latest brazilian collection of talent, but it seems to me that that's a far cry from the days of Nenê, Leandrinho, Splitter and Varejão all at the same time playing in the NBA...

Cheers Barba, my friend, hope you're doing well over there!

I was always amazed how Good Brazil was considering Basketball is not that big at all over there. I think they were outdoing themselves with that generation.

[UcanUwill]

Canada considered as international right?

I guess so.
Personally I don't give a **** about about birthplaces and passports, I only care about systems that produce talent. In that context, what makes Canada basketball interesting and distinct from US basketball is that Canada seems to have developed their own tailored methods of producing talent, they didn't simply piggy-back off the US system. I don't have too many details but I remember reading an article about it.

It's interesting to see how it paid off for the Canadians because they've clearly done some good work, spitting out some big names over time.
If anyone is familiar with their youth systems and junior NTs I'd like to learn more about what they did that worked so well.

I am also very happy that at least for now, all best Canadian players seem to want to play for Canadian National team. Even Nash kinda just stopped playing for Canada once he got good, he hated Leo Rautins tho, who was their coach.

[Pachinko_]

I think it is the same in Lithuania here. I think all Euro countries that have strong domestic basketball tradition are more like that, where France or Germany for example, Basketball is getting more popular there, but it is not really because of local teams, and thats why they develop NBA talent way better now. I think countries like Greece and Lithuania need to look in the mirror and realize that what they are doing is outdated, because we being left in a dust.

We love coaches who overcoach, thats why everyone think Jaskikevicius so god, it is actually emberassing the Jasikevicius love fest our media has, if you undercoahcing coach, people here think you suck, you UNDER coaching, you doing bad. Most guards who develop here can't even really dribble. I do not think anymore can trash talk AAU, when almost every basektball club in the world has American guard thats their offensive leader. For some reason, Americans develop unlimited number of these type of players. Guy like Spanoulis was almost anomaly, because you wouldn't see a guy with such good handle, ability to split any double and get anywhere around the court with his individual skills coming out of these countries. I will say that Greece is still way better than Lithuania at this regard, because you guys still had Spanoulis, SLoukas etc, we on the other hand have nothing of sorts.
Our best 1 on 1 player ever was probably Šiškauskas, almost 20 years ago now, and he was anomaly, because he started playing basketball at like 17 years old, he just was natural talent, not our real product.

That said, I have been watching U20 that just ended on Sunday, and maybe some changes are being made, because that Lithuanian team had many drivers on a team, problem with these guys, they couldn't finish in the paint at all, but at least we saw guys with handle who were not afraid to attack the basket faced up. We had this guy Čižauskas from 92 generation, and many doofuses thought he is next big thing, I said it at a time, I debated these fools back in 2011 over here, this guy is most obvious bust I have ever seen, He was literally a PG, our big next hope, who literally couldn't dribble when pressed, it was freaking unbelievable. It is really insane how we develop guards, nobody can do anything without a screen action.

I mean, you're like 3 million people on a good day... relax, you have basketball talent coming out of your arse
Enjoy the fact that you are one of the very few regions in the world where basketball can actually claim it's the most popular sport
Phillipines, Lithuania, Indiana and maybe a couple more places. Lithuania is a hard core basketball hub, but you're gonna have dry spells simply because of how small is the talent pool. They'll figure it out, before you know it you'll have another good batch.

[UcanUwill]

I mean, you're like 3 million people on a good day... relax, you have basketball talent coming out of your arse
Enjoy the fact that you are one of the very few regions in the world where basketball can actually claim it's the most popular sport
Phillipines, Lithuania, Indiana and maybe a couple more places. Lithuania is a hard core basketball hub, but you're gonna have dry spells simply because of how small is the talent pool. They'll figure it out, before you know it you'll have another good batch.

Yes, I guess you are right. The size of our country will push us out of the top, it already happened, but it is still pretty good to be in borderline top 10 in the world.

[Mirotic12]

Former Serbia/Montenegro team consisted of 95 percent Serbs and so was the coaches. So yes Serbia was a power house in the 2000s not just the players but the trainers and coaches. They have the best coaches and had the players . So yes Serbia was a powerhouse in 2000s

Yeah, Serbia was, but at the same time, it wasn't Serbia's national team. Two different aspects.

[Mirotic12]

I think it is the same in Lithuania here. I think all Euro countries that have strong domestic basketball tradition are more like that, where France or Germany for example, Basketball is getting more popular there, but it is not really because of local teams, and thats why they develop NBA talent way better now. I think countries like Greece and Lithuania need to look in the mirror and realize that what they are doing is outdated, because we being left in a dust.

We love coaches who overcoach, thats why everyone think Jaskikevicius so god, it is actually emberassing the Jasikevicius love fest our media has, if you undercoahcing coach, people here think you suck, you UNDER coaching, you doing bad. Most guards who develop here can't even really dribble. I do not think anymore can trash talk AAU, when almost every basektball club in the world has American guard thats their offensive leader. For some reason, Americans develop unlimited number of these type of players. Guy like Spanoulis was almost anomaly, because you wouldn't see a guy with such good handle, ability to split any double and get anywhere around the court with his individual skills coming out of these countries. I will say that Greece is still way better than Lithuania at this regard, because you guys still had Spanoulis, SLoukas etc, we on the other hand have nothing of sorts.
Our best 1 on 1 player ever was probably Šiškauskas, almost 20 years ago now, and he was anomaly, because he started playing basketball at like 17 years old, he just was natural talent, not our real product.

That said, I have been watching U20 that just ended on Sunday, and maybe some changes are being made, because that Lithuanian team had many drivers on a team, problem with these guys, they couldn't finish in the paint at all, but at least we saw guys with handle who were not afraid to attack the basket faced up. We had this guy Čižauskas from 92 generation, and many doofuses thought he is next big thing, I said it at a time, I debated these fools back in 2011 over here, this guy is most obvious bust I have ever seen, He was literally a PG, our big next hope, who literally couldn't dribble when pressed, it was freaking unbelievable. It is really insane how we develop guards, nobody can do anything without a screen action.

It probably has something to do with all the success Jasikecivius and Macijauskas had with the national team in the 2000s. And all the success Jasikecivius had in the EuroLeague in the 2000s.

Macijauskas obviously not as much success in the EuroLeague, but before his injuries, he was putting up numbers.

So Lithuania had two guys in the discussion of best player in Europe at the time, that were both guards and that played in offensive systems that were designed to set screens to get them open.

So because of all the success they had playing that way, players, coaches, and teams probably just kept doing it.

It's still pretty common in European basketball for the guards to play that way, whether it be in national teams or club teams. It's not just Lithuania.

The only guards in EuroLeague and European national teams, in the modern era, that didn't mostly play strictly as system players, coming off screens, or just constantly running pick and roll, were Spanoulis, Tony Parker, Llull, Doncic, and Mike James.

Five guards. That's it. All the other European guards (Teodosic, Shved, Jasikecivius, Macijauskas, Halperin, Vujanic, De Colo, Navarro, Van Rossom, Kalnietis, Diamantidis, Blazic, Rigadeau, Jaric, Papaloukas, Sloukas, Rubio, Rodriguez, Rakocevic, Planinic, Dragic, Jovic, Udrih, Micic, etc.), and all the other Americans and others nationalities playing in Europe (Calathes, Rice, K. Perry, Baldwin, Anthony Parker, Walkup, McIntyre, Shorts, Ragland, Langdon, Kuric, Punter, Delaney, Goudelock, Beverley, B. Dixon, Edney, M. Brown, Ford, McCollum, Wilbekin, McCalebb, Langford, L. Brown, Larkin, Pargo, Prigioni, Huertas, Sanchez, Campazzo, Pangos, etc.), were all pure system players for the most part.

So just one Greek, one Frenchman, one Spaniard, one Slovenian, and one American that were not for the most part, pure system guards. So it's not something unique to Lithuania. Even the American guards, other than Mike James, were all pure system players for the most part.