Greens Land Jasikevicius Sep 25 - One of the Euroleague's iconic players is back in the competition as current champion Panathinaikos has announced the signing of point guard Sarunas Jasikevicius to a two-year contract on Tuesday. Jasikevicius is among a handful of players in European basketball history to have won three consecutive Euroleague titles and the only one to have done so with two different teams. -- I am really going to this game to see Spanuolis stuff get swatted into the 8th row, but now Jasikevicius is gonna play I MIGHT WANT TO SIT COURTSIDE for this! from ESPN.com's Rumor Central
PG Saras/Vujanic SG V-Span/Becirovic SF Diamantidis/Winston/Hatzivrettas PF Batiste/Dikoudis C Tsartsaris/Zizic/Tomasevic Best starting point guard in Europe. 2nd best backup point guard in Europe to Papaloukas, although Papaloukas really plays point forward, so Vujanic is probably the best real backup point guard in Europe (Vujanic is top 7 point guard in Europe). Best shooting guard in Europe. Best backup shooting guard in Europe (top 5 overall). Best small forward in Europe. Best backup small forward in Europe in Winston along with Papaloukas. Third best power forward in Europe. Best backup power forward in Europe. 2 top 5 backup centers in Europe. The starting center Tsartsaris is by far the weakest point of the team and he's still a top 5 center in Europe. Too bad they don't make these games with the Spurs and Rockets at the end of the year, rather than the beginning. Because it would be the only time I can ever remember where such a team from Euroleague existed.
PG Saras/Vujanic SG V-Span/Becirovic SF Diamantidis/Winston/Hatzivrettas PF Batiste/Dikoudis C Tsartsaris/Zizic/Tomasevic RED denotes euro stars who were NBA failures BLUE denotes American players who could not hold down an NBA job yet have become stars or prospered in Europe. Plain text denotes players who are not good enough to have been either yet.
Becirovic was drafted by the Denver Nuggets but wanted to stay in Europe. Milos Vujanic was drafted by the New York Knicks. Vujanic was offered a contract by the Phoenix Suns and turned it down. Dejan Tomasevic was offered NBA contracts by several teams and turned them down. Dimitrios Diamantidis has been offered contracts by NBA teams and turned them down. Sarunas Jasekivicius and Vassilis Spanoulis DEMANDED out of NBA GUARANTEED CONTRACTS that they were STILL IN over arguments of play time and other things. They could have stayed in the NBA to fill out their contracts if they accepted being bench players. Kennedy Winston is about 24 years old. Like there's never ever been a player make the NBA after age 24? He was better in the SEC than Chuck Hayes was FYI. Mike Batiste was actually offered NBA camp deals after he played with the Memphis Grizzlies, but he went to Europe where he was offered more money and playing time. THINK BEFORE YOU POST!
Winston = declared early for the NBA draft, was undrafted, profoundly regrets his mistake, has not yet gotten back to the league Batiste = Memphis scrub = Euro star. Guys who were drafted and didn't come to league = saw the writing on the wall, stay in the barn or get pwned by the big boys
And this post is much off from your initital post. Why not just say this to begin with rather than imply those players were much worse than they actually are? Why not just say closer to reality like this post was to begin with? Why have to jump in initially with making it like half of them were never were even heard of. Perhaps you should consider that you have an irrational bias against any basketball that is not played outside the US. You know like where the following players came from: Tim Duncan Hakeem Olajuwon Pau Gasol Dirk Nowitzki Manu Ginobili Arvydas Sabonis Tony Parker Detlef Shrempf Yao Ming Believe it or not there have been some damn good players that came from outside the US and thankfully from the list above the Rockets had a more open mind than you. If you were the GM of the Rockets and had a chance to get Manu in the 2nd round you would of laughed like all the other American brilliant GM's did. Always impressive when people are proud of their ignorance.
First, many of the players you mentioned have never played a single minute in the euroleague. Second, this topic is not about successful NBA players like Ginobili, it is about failures like Spanoulis and Jasikevicus. The difference you are to be seeing? A nice team of NBA washouts and failures has the Pana oh yesses yes.
You have a problem dealing with facts. Spanoulis and Saras did not wash out. They were in guaranteed NBA contracts and begged DEMANDED b****ed to no end complained to no end to get out of them. Dan Langhi is an NBA wash out. Saras and Spanoulis are not. You have a very big problem with understanding basic facts.
