sheridanhoops.com Get Your Donatas Motiejunas While It’s Hot To save Houston Rockets GM Darryl Morey the million-dollar fine, I’ll say aloud what he wishes he could tweet: Donatas Motiejunas has been tearing it up with Asseco Prokom. Ever since Alonzo Gee texted his way out of Poland two weeks ago, the Lithuanian power forward has turned in back-to-back career games: 19 points and nine boards in a 72-68 loss to Unics Kazan two weeks ago, and then 26 and nine against a stingy Montepaschi defense. But they lost that game also, by a final count of 84-73. Five games in five weeks for Donatas and Prokom, and they’ve lost them all, meaning curious Rocket fans and prospect enthusiasts will likely have only five more chances to see how this newer, meaner Motiejunas stacks up against Euroleague bigs. That’s because the Euroleague’s format allows for 10 regular season games before cutting the field of 24 down to 16. Bye-bye, bottom feeders. The unfortunate truth, however, is that awful teams usually give youngsters awesome opportunities. So when they’re banished from the Big Show, so are their exciting prospects. All we can do after that is scour the web for choppy streams of their domestic league games and sift through an assortment of YouTubery to come away with a sense of how (or if) they’re progressing. Nick Gibson, editor of EuroleagueAdventures.com, covers Euroleague and other European basketball developments for SheridanHoops.com. His columns appear each Friday. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
wow i mis read the stat sheet. 10 points on 2 for 7 shooting with 9 total rebounds. he's still clearly not better than d-mo. apparently, you can't even evaluate basketball talent.:grin:
Agreed. I would say most of the european imports never averaged 20-30 pts for their old teams. Even our own own starter Luis Scola never averaged 20 pts in Europe and he puts up almost 20 pts in the NBA, last season. He was one of the top 5 best PFs in Europe. This player is only a kid with plenty of room to grow. If Diop and Brown can be starters, this kid pass them up with a few extra pounds and a season or two under his belt.
Go and luck what Brandon Jennings averaged: http://www.euroleague.net/competition/players/showplayer?pcode=001219 By the way Euroleague is the strongest league right now cause of the LOCKOUT.
Jennings isn't a PF/C. He is a guard with poor shot selection. He is the worst or one of the worst in the NBA at shot selection, but at least he has become a better three point and free throw shooter in the NBA.
Man ohmms can you seriously leave and never come back. I understand you have a lot of knowledge about basketball overseas but dude all your doing is just making negative comments. Fact is, nobody knows how Dmo will do once he gets in the NBA not even you so stop trying to bring negativity to one small bright spot during the lockout.
Great mix! Donatas improved alot over the years, compare that to his highlights from Nike Hoop Summit and you can see the difference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E37MBYJ-w7k
Glad to see him play well. This is especially true for Motijunas since work ethic was why he dropped so far down. He easily as the tools of a lottery pick. Here's hoping DD continues to bash him until he turns into another one of Morey's steals.
Watching that video, he has really top notch form on his jumper. He gets his elbow way in so that it is properly vertical and when he "squares" up he actually leads with his shooting shoulder to avoid torque. And in terms of repeatability, he is locked into the same motion, no matter where he is when he squares up to shoot. There are some little things, that he could do to speed it up, maybe, but whatever other flaws he might have with rebounding or defense or whatever, he should hit for a high percentage and the form is sound enough that it will scale out to whatever distance he needs it too. Also, as long as he is, I think he should be able to get that stretched out baby hook off against most anybody. The release is really high. For that shot, his strength issues shouldn't be a problem. Short of a total mental meltdown, he should be able to score in the NBA.
You clearly read that stat WRONG. 2 PT FG is NOT FG. Check it again. He shot 38.7% from the field and 26.8% from 3 PT range. He scored 1.09 points per shot. Those are Rafer Alston, or worse type stats. There is no way you can claim that is "somewhat efficient."
I said he has more talent than any player on the Rockets roster and you accuse me of bad mouthing the guy?
Read the stat right. That 2pt efficiency is better than anything I expected from Jennings at that age.
