Rashad Mobley@rashad20 a random fan just tapped me on the shoulder and said of Jan Vesely: Why did we draft that f**king bum? Here's an incredible mix of his european highlights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSbMtFF2b7s Jay Caspian Kang wrote a nice article about Vesely last year on Grantland http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/397/dunking-ninja-monarchs
I like Jan in a Euroleague style of play. He's got tons of length and athleticism, but in the NBA style of play he doesn't have the physical tools to bang in the post, and he doesn't have the outside game to really score from the wings. I think alot of scouts saw Andrei Kirilenko in him, but he hasn't developed the offensive game that Kirilenko had coming into the NBA. Don't get me wrong, if the Wizards tried to move him there would be plenty of takers. Unless he gets a great contract from a European club in a couple of years, I think he will still have a career in the NBA once he finds his niche on a decent team. Part of the problem to begin with was the fact that he was drafted and not developed properly by the Washington Wizards. Had he went to the Boston Celtics or San Antonio Spurs we might be talking about an entirely different player.
Ah, the allure of an uber athletic and raw swing man. Many a GM has been fooled into coveting such a player hoping he will develop playmaking and shot creating ability. Just ask Morey when he signed Ariza.
Guess what? He works in an Anglophone area, so he now has a girls name. Damn Euros. He is an Euro, not white. Anyhow, there really is no point in drafting either an Euro or a white guy if he can't shoot.
How often do high lotto picks straight out of "non-basketball" countries pan out, anyway? I can only think of Dirk. Absolute majority of Euro prospects either come from countries where basketball has strong following and top Euro leagues, or they are guys who went to the US early on and grew into major prospects over there (multiple years in US HS/college system). These guys from Georgia, Czech Republic, Scandinavia, Germany etc grow up die hard fans of soccer, hockey, rugby, handball, Formula 1, etc -- they have little love for basketball and it's rarely on their minds at all until they are pushed into it because they grow extremely tall and athletic.
I would welcome Jan and his friend in Houston. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/08rirsA8YaM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Deng and Hakeem were mainly developed in the US HS/college system. Yao is the other, indeed -- but he's very unique as he comes from a basketball family in (back then) a non-basketball country.
*Edit* I didn't know until just now that Vesely, like Dirk or Yao, comes from a basketball family (his father played basketball). So that whole previous argument may not apply to him -- he's probably not just a typical soccer/hockey country kid who took up basketball because he grew up too tall to play sports that his neighborhood friends played.
Yao, if I understand correctly, also spent a great deal of his time playing basketball (not uncommon for young, elite athletes in the PRC). So he does buck that trend.
