No Batum, but Koponen out-statted Tony Parker. I wonder if Koponen wants to come over. He's wildly inconsistent on O, but his three-point shooting is decent and by all accounts he's a very solid defender. If we keep Patty Mills (and I'm sure we will), that would be seven guards, and he'd get very little burn except in case of injury. BUT: he would allow us to play either Mills or Bayless as a two, because he's pretty much Rudy height. And Bayless did pretty well last summer playing 2G next to PK. (Reason why PK might want to come over: teams in Italy seem to be in deep financial shit.)
Koponen is better then blake right now and has been for some time. I have been saying to bring him over for 2 years now. He is everything that bayless is not ALSO.
Let's be honest. Kopponen is Lebron James like with a better J. That's all there is to it. Future HOFer for sure. I'm not sure why the previous posters were downplaying it.
Yes. GB has just lost all three games in a mini-tournament held at the O2 arena (the one that Michael Jackson was supposed to be playing 50 concerts in), losing to Poland (where, supposedly, Freeland outplayed Marcin Gortat, at least for a while), Turkey (surprisingly close, that one, considering they have the hated Hedo) and Israel, in that order. GB was supposed to have Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, Pops Mensah-Bonsu and Robert Archibald (who played for a while in the NBA - I forget for whom - but now is a teammate of Freeland's at Unicaja Malaga. None of them showed, along with two other team regulars. So Freeland was about it for marginally decent GB players. That said, he supposedly looked good. My guess is, if Joel opts out at the end of this coming season, Freeland will come over as backup 4/5.
From a Spurs' blog: http://www.48minutesofhell.com/2009...e-77-73-petteri-koponen-outplays-tony-parker/ I like that last sentence. @ the thought of KP selling away a draft pick/young player.
Completely unbiased Finnish observer reports that Koponen outplayed Parker: [edit: seconds too late!]
I've got a GB game recorded on my Sky+ (basically TiVo) so I'll try to watch it and report back what I think of Freeland, having seen him for x number of minutes
Nice site! Highlights of France-Italy with the Nic cross over + slam: http://player.canalplus.fr/#/267475 That's just sick.
Best part of that video is at 1:15 after the Tony Parker three where the color analyst guy does the all-too-stereotypical "muh-hah-hah-hah" French "take that" laugh.
Petri is nowhere close to Blake or Bayless. Have you ever been to the Vegas summer league and watched him live? I have, two years, several games. He is a player with potential but many holes in his game. It must be nice living in your make believe world where you just dream up crap, post it here as if it is true and then post "FAIL" when you are called out. Getting even closer to putting you on ignore as the majority of the other posters here have opted to do.
Good find. Three nice highlights of Nico in there. I can't wait to see him this fall. His confidence looks sky-high.
I didn't watch the whole game as I didn't have time (it was the GB Poland one, where he matched up with Gortat). From what I saw, I noticed the following: - He has confidence in the low post on offense. I'm not sure quite how well those moves will hold up in the NBA, but he was certainly confident enough to try up and unders and some spin moves, so that's a plus. - His rebounding is okay. It particularly improved in the other two games from the mini-tournament. Up against Gortat and the Poles, however, he struggled a bit more which might be an indication that he is not quite NBA ready - if he was up against two players who can rebound as well or better than Gortat he would get few rebounds. He was also benefited by the fact that Deng and Archibald were not around to help get boards. - His scoring is efficient. He was shooting around 50% from 2pt range for the majority of the tournament. That gets him to efficient, but not great especially as it's not against NBA opposition for the most part. There were some signs of a good scorer in there. - He sometimes got a bit lost on D. He was generally solid, but there were a couple of times where it seemed as though he either lost his man or didn't know where the ball was (i.e. had his back turned for prolonged periods). This made him miss some chances to help out on D and maybe get a couple more blocks, and also gave his opponents easy buckets. However, a couple more years should reduce this. - Free Throw shooting needs to improve. In the Turkey and Poland games combined he hit just 2-6. Alright, it's a small sample size and all that, but a player looking to get to the NBA not called Shaq or Dwight really needs to be getting 4-6 or better. - He showed good hustle and a desire to help the team. Everyone knew he was the best player on the team, but he didn't act it insomuch as he didn't demand the ball at every opportunity. As a youngster, however, he was not the leader on the court either. But he did work hard to get in good positions and do the dirty work for the team. This is a good sign for improvement in the future. Overall Freeland showed good potential, and looked as though he has the work ethic to reach that potential. I would say he probably needs at least 2 more years in Europe before he's NBA ready, though.
