So what constitutes a young player? You're jumping in mid topic - I was responding to the "not many young American" good players thought that I quoted. Wrong - The "next" generation constitutes players like Donovon Mitchell, Devin Booker, Bradley Beal, Julius Randle, Anthony Davis, etc.. etc.. but in all reality I should include Steph, KD, Harden, Lebron , CP3, PG13, Kawhi because they are still as relevant as ever in this league. Having a handful of Euro standouts does not constitute a changing of the guard. Dont let a few great personal seasons by Giannis and Jokic muddle the topic like Euro players are all of a sudden taking over the NBA or are a threat to overtake the league for quality basketball. "Start to see more great North American prospects" ????? Confusing.
We all just stating a little trend here and there, this not necessary to blow it out of proportion. Also, the NBA is learning from various aspects of the European game, the balanced scoring for example, decreasing the importance of big stats for stars.
He's a 19-year old rookie that has exceeded everyone's expectations. Is he perfect? No. I worry about his concrete shoes sometimes, but hey for someone who was deemed non-athletic, he's got Gumby's flexibility and the quick hands of a boxer. Those traits make him unique and compensate for some of the gifts that he missed out on. I do believe pro agility and strength training will make him even better in the next few years. Is he entertaining? Absolutely, one most creative and fundamentally sound players I've seen come into the league in years. He not only tries sensational passes, he executes them with a precision that is rare (for even vets). Is he a foundational building block? He appears to be, but it's really early to draw that conclusion just yet. Really excited to see him develop and grow as a Houston Rocket.
He has a net positive wingspan at 7’1, so not short armed at all. Not ridiculously long by any stretch. He’s far longer than Sabonis who has a negative wingspan. The only thing holding him back right now is experience, once he gets into NBA shape and gets some run under his belt he will be fine.
There is not a lebron in sight, but other than that the talent and play level has increased enormously in the past 10-15 years. Especially the minimum you need to provide to stay in the league is much higher. And the players still mainly come from the american system. Sooner or later we'll see someone like Lebron. The euro mvp's it is a bit coincidental but there is also some background that let it happen. NBA has much more access to the euro talent pool nowadays. I think Europe is better than US for developing players at the young ages and the opposite is true as they get older. And that provides an ideal path, that Jokic and Giannis took, to the NBA: get the basic education in Europe, learn the game and fundamentals. and move to the NBA without spending much time at professional leagues in europe and continue developing there. NBA teas used to draft players who already had had success in europe prior to coming to the nba, which had a worse rate of success.
Guess what? Sengun leads our rookies in all three stats. He also leads in steals. Second in minutes played with 18.6 per game in 30 games, the minutes not surprising at all. Frustrating, but not a surprise. Josh has been getting decent minutes only recently, now up to 13.1mpg, and Garuba has only appeared in garbage time for a few minutes here and there. Green? He's averaged 30.8mpg over 18 games, and leads the 4 rookies in scoring with 14pts/g, then Sengun with 9.1 and Josh with 6. Jalen is supposed to get back on the court for games soon, highly anticipated by all of us, for a variety of reasons. Looking forward to it.
I grew up watching euroleague and I still love it. The level of play is much better than the average nba fan thinks. But still the gap is not closing. The euro basketball has gotten a lot better, but so did the nba. Sports progress. Soccer is much better than it was 20 years ago. Anything from 20 years ago looks like slow motion in terms of play. If anything I think the gap is more now. The game that you said 'Real crashed OC' ended in overtime. More importantly it does not matter. The OC players don't care. The season did not start for them, they hardly practiced (compared to Real one month into the regular season), they are traveling to Europe for a game and they have nothing to prove. Whereas it's an opportunity to showcase themselves for Real players and it is also their chance to prove that they can do something against nba players. Still it ends in overtime. Maybe the gap between top european players and top american players has shrinked a little bit. Still the mvp types, except for Doncic, started nba career without seeing euroleague time. And Doncic underperformed so far. And the talent level of role players of an nba team is so much better than that of euroleague players. Finally there is an area where europe and international basketball has an edge. When national teams play, although the US team has the superior talent, the international teams consist of player that typically play together from very young age. A lot of things are automatic for them. They are already a team, compared to the US team, being a collection of players. And if they play with Fiba rules, then there is an extra advantage too. So I can see 1- the US national team losing 2- more international players in the nba because nba has more access to talent from young age in europe 3- more european allstars but i don't think any of these will convert to the gap closing. And the games played between nba and european teams won't really mean much until they are competition games, not exhibition games.
Dude come on. Those are preseason games. OKC wins by double digits if they played their starters more than 20 minutes. If the players you mentioned played the whole game it would not have been close
I might be little bit (or a lot) older than you. Thus I can compare '70s,'80s and nowadays NBA-Europe basketball. In 70s and 80s there was an incredible gap between two continents. When Paul Dawkins started to play play for GS in early 80s he got a god-like welcome due to his 50+ NBA game experience. NBA was like Jupiter, Andromedea, completely far away galaxy with lots of stars. I remember not being able to buy tickets from Selim Sirri Tarcan Complex because everybody wanted to see someone who really played in NBA. Even when FB transferred Calvin Roberts he was announced as someone experienced in NBA prep organizations. (may be summer league, 40 years, I don't remember the details). Now 30 plus NBA veterans play in Turkey only. Sam Dekker will play for Bahcesehir Koleji, I only learnt from Houston Rockets forum. Only very important players come to Europe it becomes sensation such as when Dominique Wilkins played in Greece or Alpi's former club BJK had Deron Williams and Allen Iverson had in their roster. People might want to watch/wait in the queue for Iverson type of players but not for an ordinary NBA player. If D. House gets his next contract in Europe no one will realize. This show the shrinking gap. I am sure no team in the world can handle top 8 NBA teams but beating middle to low rank NBA teams is not a mission impossible for leading Euro teams. We are in the middle of season and if Real or Barca play against Detroit, Orlando, Spurs, Knicks and also Houston quite likely the outcome will be 50/50. There is a still huge gap but shrank more than you realised.
I was comparing early 2000 vs today. Basketball in 70s and 80s is a different story. In particular Turkey had no competitive basketball teams, no name in international basketball those years. Now it is one of the top leagues in Europe. Turkey has closed the gap both with Europe and the Nba. House might not even have success in Euroleague. The game is different and he is not smart to learn it. But that is a different comparison. And european players will have more success in the nba, but not because they have better experiences in top euro leagues but mainly because they will have early access to the nba and will develop in the nba. It is hard to measure if the gap has shrunk or not. But my point is there is still no competition. Real or barca might have a 50/50 shot at Detroit maybe. The comparison is some of the top teams in europe with no limit on salaries have a shot against the worst team in the nba in a span of 1 game. Detroit is bad, but they have no motivation as well. The bad teams in the nba is not competing in a natural way due to no relegation, lottery odds and player development. In a competitive setting, they might look much better than this. Comparing best teams in europe with the worst teams in the nba does not make sense in that context either. Hope we have a setting better than these exhibition games to see how the teams measure against each other.
I'm a little surprised by Sengun's wingspan. I kept thinking the second coming of Kevin Willis when I saw his arms, but I guess I was wrong.
