1st Team: Team USA 2nd Team: PG - Sarunas Jasikevicius SG - Emanuel Ginobili SF - Linas Kleiza PF - Luis Scola C- Pau Gasol/Yao Ming 3rd Team: PG - Vasileios Spanoulis/Patrick Mills SG - Carlos Delfino/Brad Newley SF - Andres Nocioni/Andrey Kirilenko PF - Dirk Nowitzki C- Hamad Hadadi
If we're talking about how well they've played in this particular tournament then it's just a bit early to be deciding the 1st, 2nd and 3rd teams since there are still 3 games left to play! BUT Based on performances in the group rounds: 1st Team: PG Jaskevicius SG Ginobli C Gasol PF Scola SF James 2nd Team: PG Wade SG Bryant C Ming PF Fotsis SF Kleiza 3rd Team: PG Mills SG Newley C Howard (Hadadi got the stats, but Howard got the wins) PF Nowitzki SF Anthony Normally these 'all merit' teams are based on 'production' and clearly the TEAM USA players are far and away the best players, but limited game time for so many of them means limited production and keeps them out of the all-first-team (imo...) But the wages of wins gets them easily the highest representation overall! 5 Team USA (5-0) 2 Argentinians (4-1) 2 Lithuanians (4-1) 1 Spainard (4-1) [who also suffered from split playing time!] 2 Australians (3-2) 1 Greek (3-2) 0 Croatians (3-2) 1 Chinese (2-3) 1 German (1-4) Only 1 player made the team from outside the top 8 teams (Nowitzki - who had a fantastic tournament). And otherwise it was weighted in favour of those teams who finished higher up the ladder!
More than he did a year ago. I think just about everybody thinks he has improved and may get a shot in a year or two. He was pretty solid in Beijing. He probably has much more potential at this point than Eliyaaaaahoooooooooo.
If you could only combine the 2 of them then you'd have a pretty good rotation player!! xiki: I think he definitely looks like an NBA player - never going to be a Ginobli, but could probably be Anthony Parker without too much trouble (Newley shot 45% from 3pt land at the Olympics - and that follows a 40% season in Greece).
Any first team that doesn't include Wade or LeBron is automatically disqualified. First Team G Wade G Manu F LeBron F Scola C Gasol Second Team G Jasikevicius G Kobe F Kleiza F Dirk C Yao Third Team G V-Span G JR Holden F Delfino F Kirilenko C Hamed Ehadadi All Disappointment Team G Ricky Rubio (Young, I realize -- doesn't look '#1 pick good' though) G Redd F Melo F Yi C Bogut
didn't you call me out the other day for blind patriotism (which was funny because i'm as unpatriotic as you can be) when i said that germany is about on the same level as australia (and normally a little better)? now you're saying that dirk had a fantastic tournament. well, now i know what to think of your statements. but just for the record, dirk played a horrible tournament (for his standards as the world's best fiba player).
Well you would've seen more of Dirk than I would! All I got to see was Team USA games and Australian national team games. So I forgave Dirk for the game against Team USA and judged him on highlight packages He must've been doing something right for putting up the numbers he did tho...
well, a bad nowitzki is still better than most players and because of germany's offensive system (basically, give dirk the ball and let him do something) his numbers will be solid most of the time. still, dirk's not the same player he once was on the fiba level. against mediocre teams he's still able to dominate but against the best teams in the world he's often helpless. we've seen it again at the olympics. he played good vs. angola, he was ok vs. china but he had no clue how to carry the team vs. greece, spain and the usa. that's why he's just averaging 17 ppg on 42 % shooting. normally, and that's what i meant by saying "by his standards he played horrible", he's the topscorer of the tournament (like at the european championships 2001, 2005, 2007 and the world championships 2002) and one of the mvps. in fact, his worst finish in terms of scoring that i can remember was the 3rd place (22.5 ppg) at the 2003 european championships. dirk didn't play too well, and that's one of the reasons germany didn't reach the quarter finals at the beijing olympics.
