JPF wrote:Mirotic, the memory of Greece - Slovenia at the last eurobasket and the role of the 2nd most overated european faded away fast obviously. Or it that the actual source of the resentment?
How many games and how many minutes exactly did he play with Baskonia before NBA lockout ended? How many practices do you suppose he had with the team back than?
... remember that everytime you make such sloppy assumption, Luka Dončič grows an inch...
Dragič was a great prospect at the age of 18. The fact that he got drafted in second round were the fact he couldn't crack into Baskonia's rotation and his streaky shot. Classic "if he'd be reliable from distance, than..." type of player and with most PG's, that's more than enough to drop into second round.
Transition to NBA? Do tell me how Dončič's transition to NBA is going to be that much tougher compared to so many "averagely" athletic europeans playing there, that unlike him, couldn't even make half the transition to euroleague he did, for worse teams, at older age? Makes little sense, unless believing in that "physicaly overdeveloped for his age" theory, however Bob8 or XLtrader explained that already, disagreement about that I'd say is mostly due to supposed "theoretical" basketball knowledge kind of surpasing the practical one, to put it politely.
Noone knows into how good of a player Dončič will develop. Remember Bečirovič? He was easily twice the talent either Dragič, Bogdanović, Fournier or Belinelli were and yet the only thing he achieved related to NBA was the fact that when the doctors claimed he can forget of ever being a pro athlete again, Denver drafted him nevertheless just in case.
Dončič has a good chance to become someone unique, if he stays healthy, hungry and humble and keeps on working more than most others.
I'm not even debating whether Dragic was a good prospect at age 18. i am simply saying Doncic is a better prospect at age 18. Seriously....you think I said that because Greece lost once to Slovenia, in Slovenia (with a natural bit of ref help)? How many times did Slovenia lose to Greece in a row? It was so many times I lost count. How many medals did Greece take away from Slovenia and how many excrutiating losses did Slovebia take to Greece?
Greece pretty much owned Slovenia for years upon years. Why would you even bring up something like that? Let's keep the discussion serious please. Notice I said, 2nd most overrated after Antetokounmpo (who is Greek). So I said the most overrated European player of the current time is Antetokounmpo, a Greek, and you took it as somehow I just wanted to bash Dragic because he once beat Greece at home?
Yeah, again, let's please try to keep this discussion serious.
As far as Dragic at age 18, and if a guy is in a smaller town and smaller club, yes, they can be overlooked. A lot of it is circumstance. If a player is lucky to be in Real Madrid early and can produce early, like Doncic, or Zisis had the same case in AEK, then yes, they can be seen as better maybe than any other prospect just be their luck circumstance.
Doncic is somehow similar in situation for Antonis Fotsis......if you would ask many people that followed EuroLeague over the years, i guarantee you many will say Fotsis was the greatest ever young player the league saw and not Doncic. Some people forget what Fotsis was doing at age 19.....people were having orgasms over it, imagining what that 19 year old could be at say 25.
Part of it was he was really damn good for his age, part of it was he got to show what he could do in a huge EuroLeague club.
On the other hand......let's compare that to Spanoulis, who was another Greek prospect just one year apart from Fotsis. No one in Europe (outside of Spanoulis' local area) was saying a thing about Spanoulis in that time when people were going crazy over Fotsis, as far as I remember, and yeah, guys like Zisis and Bourousis, and even Kaimakoglou and Tapoutos, were being seen as the bigger Greek prospects.
But there were people following Spanoulis locally, in his small town, and his small town club at the time - coaches, long time fans, former players, talent scouts, that were saying this unknown kid was going to be the miracle of European club basketball. Giannakis took some criticism, because he named Spanoulis as the greatest talent Greece ever produced or would produce, when Spanoulis was like 17 or something, and the press had never really heard of him. He was doing things at his age groups that no one had ever seen before or since (averaging 30-40 points a game at age 15, while playing against 21 year olds). But he was in this small club and town, and so no one really heard about it. '
In the end we saw Fotsis become one of the best power forwards in Europe, but Spanoulis became a guy that terrorized EuroLeague for over 10 years.
So believe me, I understand what you are saying (somehow like Fotsis to Doncic = Spanoulis to Dragic), and it has nothing to do with some random EuroBasket game years ago.
