Diaw played nearly every position that one year in PHX, even guard for a bit. Was a triple double threat nightly (avg: 13-7-6). Now, he's ballooned up to ZBo level and gets fatter by the year.
Here's a fun list: the 50 youngest players in Eurobasket. Batum is 49th. Rubio is still 13th (just about tied with that USC center a lot of us wanted to draft, but Philly took higher [I saw him play for Montenegro, and it made me feel better about Freeland]). Kanter and Valanciunas are 4th and 5th.
Nic finishes with 18pts, 5rebs, 2asts, 4stls, 2blks in 40 hard played mins. He could have iced the game with some FTs in regulation but missed both. Came back aggressively in OT to get two crucial buckets and some steals though.
Batum looks great when he looks to attack as opposed to McMillan-ball -- park in the corner and wait for a kickout.
The Batum I've seen play for france is about the same Batum I've seen for Portland. A very team-player, maybe too much, one that understands the game extremely well and plays very solid on both ends: A player that is capable of doing almost anything but is just not aggressive enough to be a star - that's just not his game. He could be the best role-player ever but he's not the Parker or Novitzky type that have their teams built around them. He can be aggressive for stretches, when he's on a roll, and then disappear for two quarters, but still be able to do great damage the moment you sleep on him. That's Batum - if you give him an opening he will Definitely punish you but he's not the player to take the ball and create for himself no-matter-what like a Roy type of go-to-guy. He sees the game and takes what the defense gives him, he would almost Never take a bad shot or make a mistake. Being a team player, for better or worse, is the best way to summarize his game, of course mentioning his ability to do almost anything the team needs except for not-being (or being-more-than...) a team player.
Nic has taken 3 shots in 3 mins. Missed a contested layup, got a dunk off the fast break, and took an ill-advised 3 that airballed.
Yuyuza, do you have a link in English? I liked mumbojumbo the other day, but can't find the game on it now. None of the Ishunter.tv ones were in English.
Here's what I found. http://www.eurobasket2011.com/en/ci...rUf9le2.season_2011.roundID_7526.teamID_.html Part way down, you can click on box score or play-by-play. At the end of the 3rd quarter, France was up 57-44, and cruised to win 68-64. Which means box score stats are fattened with garbage time and don't mean much. Batum was France's 2nd scorer after Parker with 13 points but only 1 rebound, 1 steal, 2 turnovers, and 0 blocks in 26 minutes. He seems to get psyched up only for the big games.
