I'm not even sure, I just made that up haha. Googled it: The disparity is technically minor: A FIBA ball has 12 panels, while a regulation NBA ball has eight. The two are the same overall size with a 29.5-inch circumference. But after the 2006 loss to Greece, American fans and journalists were convinced the international ball was smaller.
Click through and watch this highlight reel for the game. Freeze it at the 10-sec mark. Sengun is up making a fine contest/block though he is called for a foul. His hand is in the middle of the backboard square. I didn't think Sengun could make that play when I saw it live. It's very impressive timing for such young big.
If Sengun has a bag then Wemby has a clutch. 4/4 players this offseason looking like a problem in the games they've played. Love that the guys seem dedicated as well. Jalen with Team USA select, Alpy with Turkey and JaTari at Summer League.
I actually think the last people to "find out" will be those Rockets "influencers" who thought his "archetype" wouldn't work and who advocated for Bruno freaking Fernando to start over him, and who kept singling him out as supposedly a bad defender, when the guards were actually worse, and who said he is not part of the core, and who were desperate for us to get Brook Lopez in the hope that he would be pushed back to the bench. Those are the prople who will either be last to embrace him, or who will never do it.
I'm a huge fan, but I wish he would develop a free-throw line jumper. Even in today's game, he dribbled into chaos more than once. Sengun can do that against some NBA players and almost all Euroleague bigs. But if he could take and make the easy jumper, his game would be much more difficult to defend. There's no reason that he can't add this to his bag (as well as the 3-point jumper).
Here are 10 minutes of highlights from the game, not all of them are Sengun, but includes many of his plays I also wanted to mention, scoring 24 points in high-level European basketball is no small feat. The leading scorer in EuroLeague this season, Sasha Vezenkov (who will be in the NBA playing for the Kings this upcoming season), averaged 17.6ppg, or just over half of Embiid's league-leading 33.1 in the NBA. Scoring 24 points over there is like a 40+ point game in the NBA.
There used to be a range of circumference for FIBA balls that differed by about an inch, I think, but that range also included the official NBA circumference of 29.5". I don't know if the range still exists. I remember at one point the manufacturer of FIBA balls at the time stated that they always make them 29.5" in circumference which is the same as the NBA. There used to be possible pressure differences, too, from what I recall, but don't know about those. Not sure about the material since I recall a few decades ago players saying the FIBA balls were slicker (?) or something. The panel difference wherever you got that quote from mentions is not as trivial as it seems because in the past it was stated shooters try to line up the "laces" or divisions in the panels for some of their shots. Some players had issues with doing this with the extra panels. I think there are other differences like the FIBA court is smaller, the FIBA 3-pt line is shorter, FIBA quarters are shorter (unless they changed that recently - I don't recall), the goaltending rules being different, etc. I think the FIBA rules for traveling are different, so I'm curious to see how they treat the NBA "gather step". There are a lot of little differences that affect the game like this, not to mention it looks like you can club players in FIBA without getting fouls called. lol. It's a more physical game nowadays. I think the rules differences together may affect the players more than any ball difference, but who knows.
I think Ime Udoka should be incredibly excited at this point. The weapons he will have at his disposal...oh my.
they parrot whatever their front office clowns tell them to parrot. there is a reason those clowns are paid contents.
