Vassilis Spanoulis: Thibodeau Was The Real Head Coach Of The Rockets, Not Van Gundy

A point guard with a 1:1 assist to turnover ratio that shoots .319 from the field and .172 from downtown is never going to stand a chance with any competent NBA coach.

 

For sure! We never got to see Sabonis at his peak. He was the greatest European basketball player ever in his hay day.

 

Did he miss out on Lebron James on his list of top five current players?

 

Hah hah, yes the head coach pays more attention to the players in rotation, while the assistants work with the bench warming rookies. Also, putting Kevin Garnet over LeBron is hilarious.

 

Bingo! I can't believe that people are still talking about Asilly Spafoolis!:grin:

 

Barkley, and many others, have said Sabonis was one of the all-time (not just European) greats. By the time he got to the NBA, he was a shell of his former self and lost much of his athleticism, but he was still pretty good.

 

Who would listen to anything that that a grown man has to say when he went crying to his momma when he played here.

 

Let's be real indeed. No 50th pick is going to get handed consistent playing time. They are going to get a chance to prove themselves in practice and in spot minutes, if at all. V-SPAN's shot produced results worse than you would expect from a D-Leaguer on a 10 day. Then he quit and went back to Greece. If he was any good and it really was JVG being unfair to him, some other team would have given him a shot. Guess what, they didn't.

I also think Spanoulis should not have called him out. He should have kept his head down and his mouth shut so he wouldn't be a topic of conversation, that way no one would talk about how crappy he was.

 

"You can't say that word...only we can use that word"

 

Lol!!

 

In Europe, historically, Drazen Petrovic and Nikos Galis are pretty much universally regarded as the best European players ever by basketball experts. After that, comes guys like Sabonis, Dino Meneghin, Sergei Belov, then guys like Drazen Dalipagic, Dragan Kicanovic, Sarunas Marciulionis, Toni Kukoc, Sasha Djordevic, Peja Danilovic, Dejan Bodiroga, Radivoj Korac, Kresimir Kosic, Epi, Panagiotis Giannakis, Mirza Delabasic, Dino Radja, Vlade Divac, Detlef Schrempf.

Sabonis was not considered the best European player. Only in NBA fan lore does that get stated.

He was considered the best European center, which in NBA fan lore, was changed to "best European player".

Guys like Peja, Kirilenko, Parker, Dirk, and Gasol have or may have moved into the above list from today's European players.

Guys that are in the Euroleague today, that might have moved into such lists are, Juan Carlos Navarro, Sarunas Jasikevicius, Theo Papaloukas, Dimitris Diamantidis, Ramunas Siskauskas.

Once again, Sabonis was considered the best European center ever, not the best European player ever. That is considered to be Drazen Petrovic or Nikos Galis by the vast majority of European basketball historians and experts (most of them pick Galis). It is just NBA fans that proclaimed Sabonis from best European center ever to "best European player ever".

 

If its universal, then can you point to a few sources (other than yourself, and preferably not Greek) that express such an opinion?

 

There is a thing called Google. Star using it. Thanks.

 

YOU should be the one who's busy using Google because you are called out for saying something unsupported.

 

Did someone cut Donkeymagic's balls off or something?

He seems really pissed off in this thread.

 

OK:

http://forums.interbasket.net/f9/best-european-players-of-all-time-1866/#post

I don't know how to pick out who's the expert and who isn't, but there certainly doesn't seem to be a consensus on who the top 2 or 3 basketball players are.

 

Here's how you can resolve this question, durvasa:

 

Where is it supported anywhere that Sabonis was the "best European player ever"? Do you consider fans on a basketball forum as proof this is true?