Well Marc Gasol was some sort of better Divac and Domantas while Pau was a better LaMarcus Aldridge. Younger brother was a skilled bruiser, older brother was a shifty Power Forward hybrid like Duncan who was an automatic midrange shooter. Marc was likable and Pau was annoying when he played, when he retired he went back to normal mode.
Sengun has shown up and dominated Euro Basket. Now I just hope he stays healthy and gets some rest before season starts. The worst thing would be a Luka scenario, although tbf with Adams and Capela aboard Sengun can take it easy in the regular season.
He can't take it easy, he is still the best offensive big man not named Durant who wouldn't play under the hoop by a long shot. Adams and older Capela are 8 ppg athletes at best.
Group A is a tough draw for Turkey. They'll be the underdogs against Serbia and Latvia. Both these teams have a lot of experience playing together, and Turkey has almost no guard play (unless you count PG Shane Larkin, who isn't a TO machine but can't carry a scoring load).
Even with the terrible guard rotation, I would be surprised if Türkiye fails to advance to the second round. They are better than Portugal, Czechia and Estonia. 4th place is enough to get into the KO stage. Latvia will be interesting because of Tingus Pingus. Latvian players also made some disrespectful comments about the turkish team and Türkiye coach Ataman and Latvia coach Banchi had some major beef a few months ago. Will be a tense game.
Not by a long shot - if Sengun is taking it easy - it means either we are burning out Durant(whom we definitely need in the playoffs), someone has made a fairly sizable leap as a scorer(not likely), or we are scoring in the 80s which doesn't win a lot of games. Jalen playing 80 games gave Alpi some rest if he had an off night - but he won't have that luxury moving forward because Alpi will HAVE to put the team on his back for 20+ games (at least while Durant is out with his normal age related rest) if Houston wants a chance at winning those games.
I don't know where to look this up and get specific numbers but I do know that people posted on twitter he was 7/10 in one game and 6/9 in another. He's also 0/2 from 3 point range, at least according to what I've seen on twitter. So pretty discouraging numbers on the shooting front, free throws don't seem to be improved at all and he's not confident enough to shoot 3s at all either.
Amen will have to step up thats why he is starting. FVV also needs to take up some creation duties now that we have KD theres gonna be less pressure on him so he should be able to set up the offense and shoot more open 3s
I don’t really get why so many people put so much importance on getting up the ft%. Even an optimistic 75% adds half a point per game and does not really contribute to other parts of his game. A more realistic goal imo is to increase his visits to the line by 2. This would add 1.4 pts a game. Or extending his range and increasing his efficiency on midrange and 3 pt would have far greater impact. And based on how bad he is in that department, a small He is a very steady 69% ft shooter. It has been 4 years and I would be extremely surprised if he can pull it up more than a couple points. however, I wouldn’t use euro games to judge on shooting. The tactics, the space he gets, what his coach asks for is completely different. It doesn’t mean he has improved but at least it doesn’t mean that he hasn’t improved either.
We don’t have good Döner here in the states anyhow. Germany has a stranglehold on the best döner outside of Türkiye. Maybe they ban Sucuk.
Don’t worry, with erdogan’s ongoing presidency , the migration to the us is at an all time high. I see a lot of Turkish spots popping up in so cal. Soon we’ll have access to good diner and kebaps.
