Kobe Bryant praised the tactical approach of European basketball while doing press for the FIBA World Cup drawing.
"It gave me a huge advantage actually because when I grew up playing overseas, I was learning the fundamentals of the game. I wasn't learning the between-the-legs, behind-the-back stuff. I was learning just tactical things like moving without the ball or making the fundamentally sound passes, left hand, right hand. How to use the angle on the bank shot. How to hide behind screens - just all the tactical things. We would have been lucky to scrimmage and play once a week. We'd be really lucky to do that. I think it gave me a huge advantage, so when I came back to America, the kids didn't know how to do that. And you couldn't learn to do that in one day or one week. That stuff had to be taught over years whereas between-the-legs and behind-the-back, I could learn that in a week," said Bryant.
Bryant added that if he could have been teammates with one player from the international game, it would have been Dimitris Diamantidis from Greece
"I love and wish I had him. His length and his size, and what he could do defensively, I would have loved to have another player on the wing who could harass little point guards."
Via FIBA
