DaddyCool19 wrote:Mirotic12 wrote:
A lot of people claimed Saric was a "point forward". He actually was not though. He never was, and he never will be. The same exact thing with Bender is true. This is not Toni Kukoc part two. I don't think Bender for example, even has half the passing and ball handling skills of a guy like Christos Tapoutos, and he's never been anything but a stretch four in Europe.
And again someone from Greece who was more skilled than a prospect from another country.
It's not like he could develope some passing skills as he is so old and can't learn anything new. Comparing him to someone who only averaged 2 APG once in the last 5 years is also great
Greece's basketball has nothing to do with this topic. However, Croatia's basketball does. Because the forums here overrate and over hype almost every single player with a Croatian name. I'm not sure why, but it's almost like the agencies of Croatian players just post hype here.
Croatia's 1989-1990 generation was billed as the greatest in Europe's history, and there was never any logic nor truth to it. It turned out that it was also all hype. But yet, the same thing started with Hezonja (1995) being endlessly hyped. It's not that he isn't a good player, it's just that the hype level was way blown out of proportion, and he remains overrated even now, when most people by now should know better.
The other Croatian guy from that time was Saric (1994). He was a dominant youth level player, however you could also tell he was simply more developed and matured than most of the other players in his age group, and also that he was never as skilled as the claims all said he was. Such as him being a "point forward", which is ridiculous. He has good court vision and he can make some nice passes here and there, but that's it. He's not even possibly in the realm of being a point forward. To this day though, people are calling him that. He's already a very good player, but also, way below the level people claim he is at. NBA managers I think now 2 years in a row said he was the best player in Europe, which would make every single person that follows European club basketball just burst out laughing. Hype and overrating on Croatian players, even the good ones.
Now we have this new Croatian generation, and from this forum you would swear they are almost all some kind of incredible and unbelievable players....
Look at the talk here about Zubac, I mean it's basically completely ridiculous how overrated he is here. Bender is becoming the same phenomenon as Rubio was. Does nothing in Europe at all, and is advertised as some kind of basketball generational transformation making player. But in reality, does nothing at all so far that's all that worth mentioning,
as anything related to him being talked about other than him being just a good prospect with potential and talent. But that's not the case here. He has to be the best at everything in Europe, or you get called out for supposedly trolling or hating.
Same exact way threads here in this forum were about Hezonja, and also the Mirotic threads, where he was a very good player, but people called me out and claimed I was making things up when I said expectation and hype was absurd on him. He was not anything close to the best player in Europe (as everything from USA media, NBA, and these forums claimed), and that he was too soft as a player to ever fit well with a coach like Thibodeau. If you told people here to lower the hype level of Mirotic and Hezonja, you were instantly labeled a hater with an agenda.
For just saying the truth.The odd thing is that a Croatian player like Nik Slavica, that actually is a really damn good player, never even gets a mention here at all. And this guy is actually a quite intriguing player. I am guessing that the Croatian sports agencies don't post for him here yet, or maybe they know they don't need to, because they know he can perform well, if needed.
The reason I mentioned Tapoutos specifically also has nothing to do with Greece. And the claim that constantly comes up in these forums that every Greek player is awful, and every Croatian player is great (basically exactly what this forum claims), is of course preposterous, especially when considering that Greece has much better basketball clubs, a much better basketball league, and has a better national team also, and a national team that has been better for about the last 20 years or so...........that whole let's bash any Greek basketball player meme that comes up here all the time is really ludicrous to anyone that knows a shred about European basketball.
I brought up Tapoutos because of the constant claim of Saric, and now Bender, being "point forwards". Tapoutos is a good comparison for how nonsensical this talk is. If people here actually KNEW European basketball, and actually WATCHED it, then they would get that. Tapoutos was the most hyped player in Europe in his age, and was considered maybe the biggest young talent Europe had.
It is because he was a 6-9 (he ended up 6-10) guy that could play the 3 and 4, and that could handle the ball like a point guard, bring it up the court, run the sets, run pick and roll, make a lot of tough passes, and he was also a good 3 point shooter with deep range, and he even had a good post game and face-up game.
The point being, this is a guy at 6-10, with much superior ball handling and passing skills, as compared to someone like Bender, and even someone like Saric, and he was a freak player at the youth categories in Europe. He, to this day, has never been a point forward, nor anything resembling one. So, someone with superior ball handling and passing, as compared to Bender, never became a point forward, yet here we are supposed to just automatically take it for granted that yeah, sure, Bender could be a point forward, just because some people here claimed so.
UcanUwill wrote:Is Bender really that good at passing? I saw Bender couple of times in Juniors, but I never saw his glorified passing ability. Any videos on that? Saric on the other hand, when given creative freedom, Saric was making some Sabonis-esque passes in juniors.
I think it has become apparent that Croatian agents post in these forums. Not only is almost every Croatian player getting always ridiculously over hyped, but also a mention of players of several other nationalities being good, brings a quick hammer from many here claiming how awful and what a joke those players are. Even when many of them are better than some of these same Croatian players being hyped here all the time. Is it really a coincidence that players from other countries, that might get mentioned here, would be competing for the same draft spots as the Croatian players? I don't think it is.
Not with how the trend here is always the same - insert Croatian player X, Y, Z, and the forums here just runneth over with hype. Anyone that watched Bender play, knows he's not a point forward, and that it's bizarre to even discuss something like that.
And keep in mind, Saric, whom is a much better ball handler and passer than Bender is - Saric is not a point forward at all himself.
UcanUwill wrote:I see Hartenstein name dropped a few times here. Are you guys talking about Isaiah Hartenstein? If so, I want to point out that he is not playing for Zalgiris yet, he is still playing in Germany's third division.
Supposedly, he plays in a big club...let's just understand that this is exactly the same as the Hezonja thread here last year, or even the Mirotic one before that, and that a lot of people are just claiming stuff, without actually having any knowledge of what is really happening in European basketball, and in almost certain likelihood, most people commenting in these threads have never seen any of the players play, and just watched a YouTube clip, or read something from DX. Which I have to say, is a huge hype machine itself, and really has never been all that interested in actual basketball information about the players, but rather more in promoting certain players that it thinks can be marketed. But some people in these forums act like that site is a Gospel or something.
