Eurobasket 2025 Dominant era, GERMANY are World AND European CHAMPIONS!

[Doctor MJ]

Also Schröder and Rubio where really the only small guy Euro PG's drafted at a young age. Its not a path really. USA has plenty of normal height ppl who can play.

An interesting point to consider.

In general, scouting discovery of smalls is harder than for bigs because they don't stand out immediately the same way, and as such it's typically bigs who end up coming from overseas to join the NBA.

However, it's not like there aren't extreme outliers among the smalls to be found that make international scouting worthwhile for them. The case of Steve Nash is, I think, particularly significant because he was an international who only made it to the NBA because he was extremely aggressive sending out videos to American college coaches. So that's a guy the NBA could have easily missed out on, and he was a native English speaker who literally lived a stone's throw away from the US.

NBA scouts should be thinking about how they can identify Nash-like outliers anywhere in the world, and while it's clear why it's hard to do so, that's also the point. NBA scouting needs to get much, much better at identifying levels of BBIQ, and saying "It's impossible" just doesn't work for me given that we can all see it. The scouts of course can see it better than us generally and I'm not saying otherwise, but there's clearly a difference between being able to identify a clever play and being able to actually tell the difference between a Nash-level passer from, say, a D'Angelo Russell-level passer (referencing him because he was hyped as a generational passer going into the 2015 draft, and not only was he nothing even close to that, there was a generational passer - Jokic - in that draft, and so front offices need to recognize both how to identify the very tippy top guys as tippy top, and no confuse the DLos of the world for tippy top simply because he has some cool passing hightlights).

You would think that with all these international success of the nba ( GA Luka Franz Jokic just to name a few ) NBA teams would invest heavily in the scouts in Europe...

They better be and I would assume they are, but part of the challenge has been the fact that many of the most hyped European prospects have turned out to be not very good (Darko, Bargs, etc) which has left NBA teams with a feeling that international players are often great steals late in the draft, but drafting an international player early is a recipe for getting fired.

But at this point, the fact that the best players in the world aren't American means that all NBA teams who depend on the draft to get their stars (basically everyone but the Lakers) can no longer lean domestic with high draft picks, which is scary because there's far less uncertainty about American college prospects generally than there is with international guys.

That said, the fact that there isn't actually any place where all the best players compete against each other for several years before they come to the NBA - like they did in college in the past - makes the previously easy stuff (obvious physical talent) harder.

However, the game is more mental than it was for most NBA history, and we should be able to run granular analysis with prospects to get a sense of things like visual efficiency of their neurological system without even putting them on a basketball court. That's not everything, but it would give us a perspective not beholden to a few anecdotal highlights.

[lambchop]

An interesting point to consider.

In general, scouting discovery of smalls is harder than for bigs because they don't stand out immediately the same way, and as such it's typically bigs who end up coming from overseas to join the NBA.

However, it's not like there aren't extreme outliers among the smalls to be found that make international scouting worthwhile for them. The case of Steve Nash is, I think, particularly significant because he was an international who only made it to the NBA because he was extremely aggressive sending out videos to American college coaches. So that's a guy the NBA could have easily missed out on, and he was a native English speaker who literally lived a stone's throw away from the US.

NBA scouts should be thinking about how they can identify Nash-like outliers anywhere in the world, and while it's clear why it's hard to do so, that's also the point. NBA scouting needs to get much, much better at identifying levels of BBIQ, and saying "It's impossible" just doesn't work for me given that we can all see it. The scouts of course can see it better than us generally and I'm not saying otherwise, but there's clearly a difference between being able to identify a clever play and being able to actually tell the difference between a Nash-level passer from, say, a D'Angelo Russell-level passer (referencing him because he was hyped as a generational passer going into the 2015 draft, and not only was he nothing even close to that, there was a generational passer - Jokic - in that draft, and so front offices need to recognize both how to identify the very tippy top guys as tippy top, and no confuse the DLos of the world for tippy top simply because he has some cool passing hightlights).

You would think that with all these international success of the nba ( GA Luka Franz Jokic just to name a few ) NBA teams would invest heavily in the scouts in Europe...

They better be and I would assume they are, but part of the challenge has been the fact that many of the most hyped European prospects have turned out to be not very good (Darko, Bargs, etc) which has left NBA teams with a feeling that international players are often great steals late in the draft, but drafting an international player early is a recipe for getting fired.

But at this point, the fact that the best players in the world aren't American means that all NBA teams who depend on the draft to get their stars (basically everyone but the Lakers) can no longer lean domestic with high draft picks, which is scary because there's far less uncertainty about American college prospects generally than there is with international guys.

That said, the fact that there isn't actually any place where all the best players compete against each other for several years before they come to the NBA - like they did in college in the past - makes the previously easy stuff (obvious physical talent) harder.

However, the game is more mental than it was for most NBA history, and we should be able to run granular analysis with prospects to get a sense of things like visual efficiency of their neurological system without even putting them on a basketball court. That's not everything, but it would give us a perspective not beholden to a few anecdotal highlights.

This. It's not easy to scout these players and predict how they'll transition to the American game, regardless of position, but it tends to be significantly more difficult with small players, given that ball handling isn't emphasised in Europe at all.

Aday Mara was already getting solid pro minutes as a center in Spain, but initially looked unplayable in the NCAA which is why his draft allure completely vanished.

Benjamin Schröder (not related to Dennis) was one of the most impressive wings in German youth basketball. His stats at age 17 were better than Dennis' at the same age in Germany's 3rd division. However, Benjamin was a scrub in the NCAA collecting DNPs and averaging 4 minutes per game.

[Top10alltime]

For the people that said Greece, how do you feel about Giannis dissapointing against Turkey and getting blown out in the elimination game? Bro has proved time and time again, he is the most overrated basketball player of all-time, even in this game. Pathetic how much length his fans will go to, to dismiss his millions of failures, and will only cherrypick the select few great moments he's had in his lifetime. Greece without Giannis is better than Serbia without Jokic.