pantalones wrote:Jorge Guttierez was actually the only Mexican in the NBA this past season and he would be a very good pg in the Euroleague.
I might have him confused with someone else, but I am pretty sure that he has been in the training camp of two different Eurocup teams (league level below Euroleague), and that he has been cut both times, and other point guards were signed instead.
And he seems to be worse than guys like Campazzo and Laprovittola in FIBA Americas play. Laprovittola was in a weak Eurocup team this year, and then got cut. He did just OK in a weak Spanish League team.
Campazzo was a third string point guard last year in Euroleague with Real Madrid. This year he did pretty well, but that was a on a weak Spanish League team, so a much lower level team and a lower level league.
Some of Mexico's best players have been playing in Europe for years, and never even gotten out of small clubs, or weak national leagues. I have watched plenty of Mexico's games, and I really think Ayon is the only real Euroleague level player they have.
Gutierrez and Paull Stoll (to me Mexico's best players after Ayon), I would put at more like Eurocup level players, as far as European club basketball goes.
mojo13 wrote:The list of teams now interested in Khem Birch include: Unics Kazan, Olympicacos, Panathinaikos, Lokomotiv, Galatasaray (according to the ever so reliable Twitterverse).
Kevin Pangos is supposedly in the mix for Unicaja and Kuxta Laboral both EuroLeague teams.
Malaga isn't a Euroleague team. They play in Eurocup, the same league he was already playing in. I don't see him going to Baskonia over Malaga. Malaga has a way bigger budget, and so they can pay him much more.
mojo13 wrote:No doubt Argentina's best years are well behind them, but Scola and Nocioni still have a little left in them. However I don't see Argentina getting much better anytime soon. Canada is starting to exert dominance over Argentina at the youth levels.
Brazil beat both France and Serbia in pool play at the last World Championship. With most of their best players they are a good team. Much better than Turkey and Russia. I put them a tier below the top Euro teams (France, Serbia, Spain).
PR and DR are not weaker than those teams if they have their best players playing. DR with Karl Anthony Towns and Al Horford are likely better than all those teams. DR had neither in the 2014 WC and made the play offs. PR is a weird country to gauge because of its ties with the U.S. - so many born and raised US basketballers have PR roots. A team with Napier, Harkless, Arroyo, Barrera, Holland, Balkman should beat the teams you mention. Carmelo Anthony's qualifies a Puerto Rican...too bad he never played for them. PR has problems with their federation and coaching for the last couple years - that is much to blame for their poor performance over the last few major tournaments. Historically PR has a strong tradition with many top 8 finishes in the World Cup and Olympics through the 90s and 2000s.
Mexico and Venezuela are the lesser powers that I can not defend much - they seem to currently have good coaching and systems in place that helps them perform beyond what their talent would indicate.
We will agree to disagree then. I watch every EuroBasket and every FIBA Americas tournament.
European teams like Czech Republic, Latvia, and Belgium could easily win FIBA Americas. So I will definitely disagree. The difference of quality of the teams is big.
Brazil is the only team that can compete with good European teams consistently (outside USA and Canada), and even they are not at that level. And no, I don't think at all that they are better than teams like Russia and Turkey. Although, they should be tough in the Olympics, since they are playing at home, and Brazilian teams historically due very well when playing at home.
PR and DR would stand almost zero chance of making it out of a first group stage at EuroBasket. The only way they could make a second round of EuroBasket would be if they got in the easiest group of the tournament, and even then I have my doubts they could make it.
And you can't use 1 or 2 games as an example of what Americas teams would do in EuroBasket. Because in an actual EuroBasket, they would have to play against teams that are better than them in almost every single game. So let's agree to disagree on the issue of most Americas teams being competitive at EuroBasket level.
As far as Nocioni goes, from watching him last season and this season in Real Madrid, I don't think he really has anything left in the tank. He's done for the most part, and I would expect that he probably retires from basketball right after the Olympics. Last season he played two good games the whole year, both at the Euroleague Final Four. In the whole season that was it. He admitted later he saved up all his energy just for those two games and coasted the rest of the year.
This season in Real Madrid, he has basically been totally useless the entire season. The last time he played with Argentina was a full 2 years ago (when he was a far better player than he is now), and he was fairly mediocre with Argentina back then.
