EliteSmarts wrote:The fact he was Russian and became good player in the NBA is wild. Basketball is not popular at all at Russia so I wonder how he got into the sport and then how he even develop his talent as I'm sure Russia didn't have many Basketball facilities, camps, games back in the 90s etc lmao
Basketball in Russia is FAR more popular than in many countries that produced NBA players. Even Switzerland has had 2 good players, Sefolosha and Capela, thats far more crazy than freaking Russia having good NBA player rofl. How is Russia having great player surprising, you are slipping big time here. Basketball in late Soviet union was a huge sport, when Union split, yes, sports culture changed fram state to state, like In Russia Basketball production worsened because new Russia was better at Hockey and later Soccer, so in Russia particularly basketball slipped, where in countries like Lithuania and Latvia, Soccer slipped big time, when last Soviet born Soccer generation retired, Soccer in Baltic countries became a complete joke. But Soviets were big on Basketball and Kirilenko was from that generation. Russia was a very good team in late 00s and early 10s, they won Eurobasket and Olympic bronze, come on dude.
Basketball is a niche sport in Russia now, but they still have 3 teams in Euroleague for god sake, only 1 is popular to be fair, but they are not Switzerland, where I bet 95% of people probably have never played a sport ever.
Utah was the first team that almost figured it out, they struck oil first but it was too soon for them to figure out what oil was. They played AK47 as a bigman before Boozer and AK was AMAZING. But it was the times when 2 bigs had to play in the paint and do it all forwards were seen as perimeter players, so they went backwards and put Kirilenko back at SF, position that was never optimal for AK, it was optimal for those times and AK was still good enough to be strong starter, but man as PF and even small ball C, he was, and would have been much better. Put him today, he is guaranteed allstar in hes not injured.
