The FIBA U18-European Championship started today in Turkey with a bunch of projected first round picks playing it including Isiaiah Hartenstein and Kostja Mushidi from GER and Frank Ntilikina from France. The games can be watched on the FIBA-yt channel (live or later on).
I just finished watchin the GER vs FIN-game: GER ran them off the court, with Mushidi and Hartenstein even throwing down a bunch of alley oops and converting threes to run up the score even more in the 4th. Mushidi looked great, scored very efficient 18 points (7/10 FGs, 3/4 from three) in 21 minutes, shot the ball well from the outside, made some fancy passes (6 assists) & rarely played out of himself. On a few occasions he went 1-on-1 too much late in the shotclock and got himself into trouble (4 TOs), although those were situations where they mostly just dumped the ball to him after the play had broken down. He can create some, I think, but it's not like he's crazy good in that department so I'm not surprised to see him struggle there a bit. Overall he looked like the best player on the court to me though. Hartenstein struggled a bit at the beginning, but ultimately had a good performance as well putting up 9 points (3/5 FGs, 3/4 FTs), 5 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 blocks and 1 steal in 21 minutes. The passing really stood out today as he had multiple of those highlight-reel type of ones where he just whips the ball across the floor Kevin Love-style. He also had a few very bright moments in the halfcourt where he put the ball on the deck and ran some big to big-action and dumped the ball inside. I've also seen him bring up the ball on a bunch of occasions when the guards couldn't get open, he looks very good in those moment. TO-wise he had a few too many of them (3), but two where on travels in traffic iirc while he somehow he managed to get most of his passes -- even the really funky ones -- to his teammates. He didn't connect on both his three point-attempts. GER was a whooping +30 with him on the court and I think he even talked some trash to one of the finnish big men after one of his alley oop-dunks in the 4th.
I also looked into the FRA vs RUS-game for a while, bc of Ntilikina but he got into foul trouble early and therefore had to sit most of the second quarter. From what I've seen he was relatively passive on offense so I stopped watching somewhen through the third (was a tough game to watch all around, neither team ended up scoring much, lots of calls from the refs, too, little flow in the game). He had two chase down-blocks that stood out, but offensively he didn't look very impressive. Didn't really get into the paint, took a few too many contested threes and wasn't very efficient on those (1/4). Hopefully he'll be able to show more over the next days.
Both teams play again tomorrow.
Edit:
Some twitter-stuff:
sry. I was mainly focused on the two german kids (I'm from there). The game being so one-sided also didn't help in that regard. 
sry. I was mainly focused on the two german kids (I'm from there). The game being so one-sided also didn't help in that regard. 
