I personally prefer Dragic to Sergio right now. In fact we don't need him right now (Goran fulfills that role perfectly), but you never know, it's a good asset. Could end up being traded, could become a key piece on the championship roster...
Not really, being tough dosen't mean gurantee good defence at all. As barkley once said, saying player has hustle or toughness is like saying a girl has good personality - i.e she's ugly. And since it was OHMSS we are talking about, we can defintely assume it wasn't a compliment.
Still a bit of non sequitur in his argument. It just doesn't follow for me. I just don't imagine a player who doesn't play D but is tough at the same time.
Spain has another preparation game with Australia today at noon, Houston time. Neither Llull or Newley played in the first game so they're more likely to play in this game?
I only caught a quarter or so, but Llull did play. Didn't see Newley. EuroBasket starting on Wednesday. You can watch every game on ESPN3, but there should be plenty of 'free' online streams as well. I think I already posted this a while ago, but there are a few things to look forward to from a Rockets fan perspective. Not only is EuroBasket the clostest thing to NBA quality basketball you'll see in a while, but you got one current Rockets player in Dragic and a few guys the Rockets hold the rights to (Llul, Eliyahu, Hervelle) . Also Coach Finch, who'll be coaching Great Britian. Spain are the favorite to win the whole thing, so you'll probably get to see quite a bit of Sergio Llull, though it has to be said that Spain is very deep and they very well could get knocked out in the second round, thanks to an idiotic competition system. With Casspi out due to injury, Eliyahu will have to carry most of Israel's scoring load. In Israel's last two exhibition games he had 27 points against Russia (featuring Kirilenko & Mozgov) and 19 points against Poland. Israel is in the group of death though (Germany, France, Serbia, Italy & Latvia), so they more than likely won't make it past the group stage. Slovenia on the other hand are in a weak group and are a near lock for the quarter finals. Hervelle looked decent against Germany (knocked down a few shots, made some good cuts & played solid D on Dirk), but I still doubt we'll ever see him in the NBA. Great Britain lost most of their exhibition games (the ones against semi-quality opponents anyway), although it would have to be said that they were without Luol Deng in all but two games. GB is also without Ben Gordon and Pops Mensah-Bonsu, who would have been their 2nd and 3rd best players. Today's loss 23 point loss against Latvia, one of the worst teams in the EuroBasket, should be worrying though. On another note, Luis Scola is also back to playing again and will try to help lead Argentina to victory in the FIBA Americas Championship starting Tuesday. If you're due for your basketball fix and plan to watch the EuroBasket, but don't know which teams to watch, just watch any game involving two of the following teams: Spain, Lithuania, Germany, Italy, Serbia, Greece, Slovenia, France, Croatia, Russia & Turkey. It's a different kind of basketball (much less ISO, much more cutting & man/ball movement - probably most similiar to Sloan/Adelman offenses), but certainly better than any random summer league or Drew League game. Cheers.
I believe Hervelle is not playing in the EuroBasket. I believe he got injured and was replaced on their roster by DJ Mbenga, who had been cut earlier.
I'm just thinking that "terrible at D" = "plays no D". I just don't see the logic in a player being tough but at the same time playing bad defense; if a player is tough, I would imagine that he is at least competent on D.
Well you are wrong in the case of Llull then. Because Llull is very tough and also is atrocious at defense. Perhaps you have a different definition of tough than I do. If your definition of tough means that a player must be a good defender, then Sergio Llull is charmin tissue soft - that is, if level of defense defines "toughness" to you.
I'm not implying that toughness defines defense; I simply said that I don't see the logic in your characterization of Llull; it seems to me rather that being tough but awful on defense contradict each other.
Scola and Amare are both very tough and also atrocious at defense. Being "tough" does not necessarily mean you are a good defender.
I don't consider Stoudemire to be tough; he's certainly powerful (at least on the offensive end). Scola is more of a crafty-hustle-type guy with lots of moves.
Barkley & Brad Miller is/was always considered "tough" but have always been atrocious at defense. I guess this comes down to semantics. YOUR personal definition of tough. __________________
