Israel is not good. Getting blown out by France (which is a good team) now. No wonder they were trying to get Amare Stoudemire on their team. http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports....oudemire-has-applied-for-israeli-citizenship/ Guess the good thing is that Casspi is going to have a completely different job for Houston than he does for the National team, so his struggles in FIBA play is hopefully not going to foreshadow his NBA play.
Like i predicted, dmo is doing better and better in NT, what i like is hes seems to be improving his defense every game, once nba season stars he might be servisible on defence end and we all know on offense he's great (though needs to improve ft and 3pt %).
Glad to see Dmo hitting his stride. IMO the most worrying thing so far is his pick and roll defense. He's not very athletic and has bad instincts too. Hopefully this will be less of a problem with Howard/Asik backing him up.
Not a bad line at all. Watching on a bad feed it looked like he only made major mistake on defense, and his one foul was a very smart foul.
It is a shame but Argentina time has pass away. The golden generation "la generacion de oro": Scola, Ginobilli, Nocioni, Pepe Sanchez, Prigioni, Delfino, Oberto are too old and the young players are not so good. 1 Gold Medal and the first team that beat the USA team. Great players Great people
I agree that Casspi's role with the Rockets will be different. He tries to be the leader and the enforcer of this national team and just doesn't suit him at all. That's more on the coach than on Casspi, but I wonder whether he realizes it himself. The bad thing is that he's a guy who needs to feel confident to play well, and with his current play his confidence will need a major rebuild and I don't think he has the luxury to lick his wounds. This is his last good chance to revive his NBA career to some extent. I begin to doubt his mental toughness and his ability to deal with adversity. Perhaps he and the Israeli team can turn it around in the next few games, but I'm not holding my breath.
I agree with your and Carl Herrera's earlier comments. The Eurobasket and the NBA are two totally different things. Even France, which is like the Spurs enforced with Batum, Petro, Gelabale, Ajinca etc., i.e. a true NBA team, does not play like one. The rules are a bit different and coaching as well. The teams that have NBA coaches like UK and Ukraine, it shows immediately. Casspi can't play ball in a setup that plays like Cleveland. The point guards bring up the ball and stop the game. Kyrie Irvng can take the ball to the hoop or hit the 3 pointer, these guards cannot. Casspi has to play fast basketball. The minute he stops and thinks about something, he's lost. His free throws show his mental problems perfectly. I think he hit them all (6?) against France, but could not make anything in tight games. The other thing that is obvious in the EuroBasket games is the softness. I can see that none of the NBA players is ready to play hard because they do not want to risk getting hurt. An injury could ruin their future, a risk not worth taking.
You are mightily overrating Germany, I'm saying that as a German. Winning vs. France was a total fluke game and doesn't represent our level at all. We have a new coach, are missing all our key players(Dirk, Kaman, Ohlbrecht, Harris, Schröder,...) and haven't figured out any system. The bench is full of scrubs. Coach Menz doesn't seem to run a structured offense at all and trusts the players to improvise, resulting in our terrible style that mostly leads to jacked up 3s, 1on1 plays or post-up situations. Defense is beyond terrible, you will always have a guy wide open for the 3 because the guys get lost on screens or try to play help-defense when it's not neccessary. Players also seems to lack determination or class, the overall 1on1 defense is half-assed. What you saw in the games vs. Belgium and Ukraine is where this team currently stands, below mediocre and no competition for good nations. How you can say Germany is playing beautiful basketball is beyond me, everyone in Germany thinks this team is terrible and has no real system. No well thought plays on offense and no structure or flow. If you want to see beautiful Basketball, watch the Eastern European teams like Lithuania, Slovenia, Serbia,..., their style and teamwork is 100x better.
I didn't just regard to Germany,every game you play against a team, and those teams were able to give a tremendous fight and that what made the games so fun to watch, all I'm saying is that until now, every game Germany has played was very interesting and it was determined in the last minutes, game against France was very interesting, winning a game against France is always something to remember, even though they are not 100% percent. Game against Belgium was a thriller, even though Germany lost the game was interesting, they made big 3 point shots but eventually they just couldn't capitalize and get the win. The game against Ukraine was interesting until the last one minutes and a half where you could already sense this game is over. I'm not saying I'm a fan of Germany and want them to win every game, all I'm saying that thus far all the games they played were enjoyable and delightful.
Slovenia is not Eastern European. It doesn't matter as long as they have the European Carlos Boozer on the team, Pero Antić. He signed for the Atlanta Hawks this offseason.
Can't wait to see Antic play against Boozer in the NBA. It's going to be like running into mirror when they defend each other! First Macedonian in the NBA! Great win against Serbia yesterday. Macedonia needs to beat Latvia and Bosnia&Herzegovina to advance in the second round. After Montenegro scandal, chances are minimal, don't think that there will be repeat of the 4th place 2 years ago. At least today is a day off.
Random artlices on the Rockets International players (nothing ground breaking): Overall synopsis on their performances http://blog.chron.com/ultimaterockets/2013/09/motiejunas-asik-among-rockets-adding-european-seasoning/ Spoiler Article bashing Papanikolaou http://www.rantsports.com/nba/2013/09/06/eurobasket-2013-houston-rockets-seeing-they-need-to-wait-to-bring-kostas-papanikolaou-to-nba/ Spoiler
Papanikolaou has never been a player that should dominate games. He's a perfect complimentary piece to a good team and he still holds value for the Rockets because of his all-around skills. I think you can make it through. Latvia will be a tricky fixture, but BiH is an average team, mostly because they're led by a bad coach (Aco Petrović, Dražen's brother, if anyone's wondering).
Greece has played a lot of pick-and-roll and inside isolations. Small forwards are usually involved in neither. Greece also blew out both their opponents so far by the 3rd quarter and cruised in the 4th. This article is basically bashing Papanikolaou for fulfilling his role within a functional and effective system instead of trying to show off or "be assertive" as idiots like Skip Bayless would put it. Counter example: Shved's statline from the Greece-Russia game: 17 points, 3 rebs, 4 assists, 1 block. Looks better, doesn't it? Well, Shved had 2 points throughout the first 3 quarters. Those 3 quarters include 100% of the time that Russia was in the game, plus 100% of the time it took for them to get dismantled and blown out. Shved then hogged the ball throughout garbage time, with Spanoulis chilling on the bench, to pad his stat line with another 15 useless points. I guess he's clearly NBA ready, right? Papanikolaou has played fine in both games. He hasn't stood out, because nobody has and nobody should. When the system works, nobody needs to. He has provided the Greek ball handlers with a baseline drive feed option or a 3-point option for the kick out on pretty much every possession. In the first game, simply put, Sweden was so bad that the extra scoring option he provided was pretty much never needed. Either our guards would get to the rim and finish, or the inside men would ISO their way to a post-hook most of the time. Let's take a moment of silence for Jerebko as well, because guess who killed him. In the second game where Russia went heavy on the perimeter shooters, which made Trinchieri keep Bouroussis (and with him our inside ISO) on the bench, Papanikolaou was utilized more often, thus the higher scoring. Greece has 6 people score between 9-11 points in that game. I guess we should have had Pap go white Lebron instead, so the writer would have something more exciting to write about. tldr: Whoever wrote that article is clueless about basketball and probably didn't even watch the games.
I have had a small nagging suspicion that D-Mo playing for his NT might not be good for his game. Playing in a zone scheme does not teach him anything about the NBA style defense. However having watched the Lithuania team for three games (using a horrendously bad feed which freezes for seconds several times a minute) it seems like D-Mo is gaining minutes and his defensive awareness has increased dramatically. Good signs I think.
