I know its not super new, but thought it may be a slight update. The Houston Rockets acquired the rights to Donatas Motiejunas as part of a trade with Minnesota during the 2011 draft and the forward will travel to the U.S. soon. Motiejunas, picked at No. 20, spent the 2011-12 season playing in Poland for Asseco Prokom and recently FIBA gave him clearance to sign with the Rockets in July. That will allow him to be on their Las Vegas Summer League team, if he doesn't join up with the Lithuanian national squad. Lithuania is playing in an Olympic qualifying tournament in July. "We will talk with the coaches and everyone," Motiejunas tells the Houston Chronicle. "I'm trying to figure out how everything is going to be with the national team. If we don't figure it out, then, yes, I will go to the summer league. To play on the national team is a great honor for every basketball player. But my goal is to play; I don't want to be just some other guy who sits on the bench." Benetton Treviso still holds his rights and according to the newspaper, buyout talks will commence on Saturday.
It's refreshing to have a guy who, if anything, sounds too confident. We have enough "nice" guys already.
Motiejunas was referring to the Lithuanian National Team, which is deep with bigs. He doesn't want to shun a chance to be "the man" this summer with the Rockets in summer league (and with the coaching staff in practice) in order to sit at the end of the bench for Team Lithuania. However, if the National Team planned to play him decent minutes, he'd be more likely to want to play for his country. That's all he meant. It wasn't directed at the Rockets at all.
so our summer league team will be something like this fortson zoran dragic/rookie sg? marcus morris patterson d-mo/g. smith/rookie center?
The OP quotes are from a larger article written by Jonathan Feigen. Since there is confusion about what team DMo was talking about, we might as well repost the whole interview here. (Besides, OP left out a link to his source.) http://blog.chron.com/ultimaterocke...s-goal-is-clear-i-want-to-be-one-of-the-best/ Carl Herrara already posted it in the Motiejunas Polish Team thread.
No need to go for Pau when he would only be blocking the development of this guy. Start him right off and let him work through his kinks on the court. Sorry Scola.
so this guy is gonna come and be amazing for the rockets in the NBA, yet would sit at the end of his bench for the Lithuania National Team?? hahahahaha….
Not that I'm ardently pro-Gasol (although I actually tend to lean that way), but WHO BETTER to mentor Motiejunas than a guy like whom he could max out to become? A year or two of mentoring from Gasol could make Motiejunas even better. Just saying.
I guess you don't know how good Lithuania is. In the 2010 Worlds, they got Bronze because they were on the USA side of the bracket. They beat both Spain and Argentina. There starting PF is Linas Kleiza and their best player in the tournament. Lithuania, as many Euro teams, likes to play the vets. There is no way Motie starts over Kleiza. And they have further depth. Plus, Jonas Valanciunas is Lithuanian too, and he was the #5 pick in the draft last year. He plays Center (probably backup for Lithuania as well), but would still mean DMo wouldn't get any C minutes. So everything would be minutes behind Kleiza.
Ive thought this.numerous times... we can keep scola to mentor and dmo could gain some nice post moves/footwork... or he can learn behind gasol and develop his game on both sides similiar to the spaniard... im not so much in favor of a gasol trade because i believe there is better avenues, but i wouldnt mind dmo learning behind him for a year or two... if dmo could keep up his intensity and strive to be good at defense, than learning offensive moves from scola(whos his favorite player) would also be a plus...
