Very good 1st half by V-Span. Without him, Greece would be down 15+ points at the half. I'm going to bed now.
It's almost to the point that he was so unbelievably irrelevant as a NBA player that I sometimes forget he was a Rocket entirely. More power to him if he's dominant overseas. Best of luck to him, but if the goal behind posts like this is to make us jealous or anything of the sort I don't even know how to respond. JLIII is a better basketball player than him.
I couldn't go to sleep right away so I turned it back on. Spain up by 19. Nobody will beat them except Team USA. They are just too good for Greece.
vspan had some real nice drives. he has an uncanny ability to get to the rim. once spain went to a full court press, vspan looked completely frazzled and turned it over many times. he also had a SF3 moment when he dribbled off his foot out of bounds while under pressure from rudy fernandez. i think vspan has the talent to play in the nba - it was unfortunate he had a coach who would bury you for a turnover. spain has some real nice talent at guard.. calderon, rudy, ricky rubio, navarro, garbajosa... i may be forgetting someone. they can definitely challenge for the gold.
rudy shows hops, ability to handle the ball, and to shoot. Its fun to be a blazers, but its a bit scary for other fans. And the most scary part of blazers is that, their starting 5 can go on and play for the next 5-10 years. Bayless, Roy, Fernadez, aldridge and oden. With players like batum, websterr, frye and rodrigues there as well.
It's gonna take him a while to adjust to the NBA but he will help the Blazers. He's got the whole package. Great athleticism, an outside shot, he stays in motion & slashes without the ball and he attacks the rim off the dribble. The Blazers need to run the ball more than last year to take advantage of his abilities. Before it's over, Fernandez may end up being their SF of the future instead of Webster or Outlaw.
Vspan sucks and hellas got reamed by Spain. The fact that you started this thread encases you in a sarcophogus ogd suckdom.
VSpan looked very good, he was the quickest player on the floor and the most aggressive at going to the hole. I wish he were still in Houston.... DD
That's about the only thing he did. Once they started pressing and taking away his lanes, he couldn't do **** and started going helter-skelter to the rim. Van Gundy was spot-on about him. He's too out of control to effectively play the point in the NBA, and he can't shoot, therefore SG is out of the question. Looks like he's stuck being the Tmac of Greece for his career.
He did play aggressively, but so does Manu, and if Tmac actually played as aggressively as VSpan he would be a lot better too. The best players go hard, and attack the basket, they are not afraid of making mistakes, yes mistakes are going to happen...the best players make a lot of them..... It is the ones that learn how to minimize those mistakes which become quality starters. V-Span makes a lot of mistakes, and he could certainly learn to control them better, but they are aggressive mistakes, trying to go to the basket and in the NBA.....he would be LIVING at the FT line doing this..... Dwayne Wade and Kobe learned that......V-Span attacks as well...he is not near as good as them but if he were on the Rockets, our 2nd unit would not have issues scoring the ball....as he would be on attack mode from the moment he hit the floor. Anyone that knows ANYTHING about the game of basketball can see that he has skills.....and could easily be in the rotation of an NBA team. It is fairly obvious that a lot of people do not like him, and with the way he whined his way out of Houston, I understand, but hsi basketball abilities are pretty good, and his pick and roll passing is very very good.... V-Span would fit in great with Scola, Yao, Landry and the rest of the team.....he is a much better playmaker than anyone outside of Tmac on the Rockets right now...and if he came back, I am sure the haters would come around. People judging him based upon one ROOKIE season in Houston are not understanding the full situation....it takes a while for people to adjust to the NBA...especially at the PG position.....I have no doubt he would be in the rotation and pushing Rafer as a starter if he stayed... DD
The bottom line is that he quit on the team. Management tried to get him back but he refused. It's still astonishing to see that we got Luis for him.
There is no doubt about this comment, he certainly did exactly that. He may have had his reasons, but the fact that he REFUSED to come back was childish of him. I am happy with got Luis, but if V-Span decided to come back to the NBA, there would be a line of NBA teams ready to give him a chance. He was a rookie.......and he is clearly NOT an outside shooter, he is a midrange attack the basket player. I will bet you did not know that V-Span in his limited rookie year shot better from 2pt range than Rafer Alston....... JVG was a HORRIBLE coach for a player like V-Span....Rick Adelman would have gotten much more out of him. DD
If you think Adelman would have put up with a rookie who is prone to breaking off the offense, can't shoot and commits a lot of turnovers, then you are crazy. Adelman didn't play Gerald Wallace as a young player- do you think he would have given Spanoulis significant minutes? V-Span's play as a Rocket was lousy. Cherry picked stats aside, Rafer was better *in every aspect*. I love how you *still* buy into V-Span's BS conspiracy that JVG held him down when it's clear that he wasn't ready for the NBA. Did you just forget how he had more turnovers than assists? Did you forget him shooting 31% from the field, including 17% from the three point line? Did you forget the other guards blowing passed him at will? His skill set isn't suited to the NBA. There weren't even flashes of improvement. He wasn't fast enough, long enough, smart enough, or tough enough to make it there. When you compound that with the piss-poor attitude then I don't see how anybody who doesn't have emotional ties to Spanoulis would want him back on the Rockets. At some point you have to let it go, DD.
I had heard a springtime rumor that he might wind up back here in '08-'09, but nada since. What is his contract situation in Greece?
Rookie season Turnover %: Manu Ginobili: 17% Kobe Bryant: 18.5% Wade: 17.3% Aaron Brooks: 15% Chauncey Billups: 16.7% Sam Cassell: 17.8% Steve Francis: 19.3% Vassilis Spanoulis: 24.3%. The only one I found close to him was: Rafer Alston: 23.1%. Rafer didn't get many minutes as a rookie, either, but he stayed and learned instead of pouting.
