Thanks to buckaroo we now know about the top European prospects. Now if you had the choice of picking a Nickoloz Tskitishvili over a Yao Ming would you do it? I would because I believe that European basketball league prepares you for the nba style of basketball much better than China's basketball league. An what about Bostjan Nachbar over Qyntel Woods because I believe he might be a better fit for the Rockets. In the long run I know Ming and Woods might be better than Tskitishvili and Nachbar. But as far as bust wise, I believe Tskitishvili and Nachbar have a lot less chance of being a bust (even though Tskitishvili might look like a bust at first because he is only 19 and has barely played against any top European big man, I believe he has a lot of potental). Thoughts??? Comments???
Rudy's not over there on vacation. I'm excited about the draft (like, what else do we have to be excited about?) and it sounds like the damn Clippers made a great pick a couple of years ago. What was that guy's name again? They may not be interested in Williams, they may have their "Williams" coming from Europe soon.
Bostjan Nachbar won't be a first rounder because he just signed a long, lucrative contract with his Euro team. However, there are several Euros who will make a huge impact, one of whom will be Jiri Welsch. However, I'll still go with Ming and Woods this year. The Euros are going to make a huge impact in the next few years because they play smart "team" basketball. Most of the players coming out of U.S. colleges are "one-on-one" players with precious little concept of teamwork. The tendency is to form little "posses" -- if a player is not in the posse, he is not getting the ball. It's losing basketball, but, hey, it's toooooo cool.
I would love to see the Rox pick up Woods with our first pick, get Marcus with the second, and trade our second rounder plus sweetener for Jiri Welsh. Woods is the future 3, Marcus/Cato our 5s, and Welsh can backup the 1 and 2 (at 6'6''). Woods probably sees limited minutes behind Rice and Morris (maybe Cat against bigger 2s). Marcus would be in the rotation behind Cato on size alone, hopefully Larry Smith/CD can teach him some post moves. Welsh would be the perfect backup for our guards if the scouting reports are true (6'6'', pg handles, decent D, etc.).
I think everyone needs to be careful in approximating the value of European players. Before Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol, and Peja Stojakovic, it seemed everyone was down on European inports. They're too soft, can't play inside, aren't fast enough, etc. Now, thanks to some recent successes by European players, bolstered by some excessively laudatory journalism, the Europeans' reputations are running a bit too high. I'm not saying they are bad nor that a select few are not worthy of high lotto picks. I'm just warning everyone to not value them too high. Can 19 year old phenoms in the Euro system really be all that much better than 19 year old phenoms in the American college system?
a phenom is a phenom no matter where you play is what scouts are realizing you can't teach 7'0 and you can't teach hops... some of these kids have great potential. When you play for these european teams, 19 year old phenoms don't start, so are better trained in fundamentals where if they were native born they would have been scouted long ago and sitting on the Clippers/Pacers bench Once you're drafting on pure potential, that kind of gets rid of the "quality of competition" case... just makes the whole thing more of a crap shoot
One thing Euro's still don't do particularly well is play good defense (especially one-on-one). Gasol is alright, but most of the backcourt Euro's are real bad. One thing we need is a defensive stopper and I don't see a Euro giving us this. The big man could be worth the risk since he's a potential C (in the Dirk mold), but for our backcourt guys I would prefer if we got a hardnosed player like Butler.
Bsb, I am thinking that Bulter is out of the loop because with the #5 we will go with either Dunleavy or Woods if Nikko is gone. Then with #15 we will go bigger and Amare may be the one. I guess that would be defense and rebounding right there, but he will not play much next year.
DearRock, I agree that at #5 we'd try to get woods if he's still there, but what if we're at 6 or 7 or if Woods just gets taken before we pick? Butler becomes an option at that point. Either that or we try to deal. I think Woods and Tskitishvili are the 2 guys we want. We'd probably prefer Woods because he'll be productive quicker and we're looking to have a winner by the time we move into the new stadium. I do think Tskitishvili is an option though, as he could definitely be a C once he puts on some pounds. We'd have such a quick team with Griff and Tskitishvili at the 4 and 5 and Cat and Steve at the 1 and 2. We'd just need to figure out how we can fix our SF need and we'd be set to be like Dallas (except I think our team under this scenario would be better defensively...at least in the paint).
