And Duncan's report is not complete praise. http://www.theteamrebound.com/2013/06/scouting-nikola-mirotic.html Despite this offensive explosion, I remain a bit sanguine about his NBA prospects. Unfortunately, Mirotic also looked the part of a Euro small forward on defense and the boards in this game. His help and pick and roll defense was pretty much nonexistent, despite what I'd heard about him being a good team defender. He also did not look great closing out on shooters. Even worse was his rebounding, as a Barcelona frontcourt lacking any NBA athletes inflicted several depressing stretches of volleyball on the offensive glass while Mirotic stood by helplessly. He pulled down only two rebounds in his 17 minutes, although his pace-adjusted per 40 numbers in the ACB and Euroleague were respectable at about 9 per 40 minutes combined and a little under 3 offensive boards per game. Perhaps I caught him on a bad night, but defensively he looked like Matt Bonner out there on Friday. Mirotic's struggles in Game 3 seemed to stem from his biggest weakness right now: his physical profile. He has very tight hips that prevent him from getting into a deep defensive stance. He does not seem to take stretching seriously at this point, either unwilling or unable to execute the team's warmup of deep lunges to more than half depth. The 236 lbs he is listed at seems a little optimistic, as he lacks any muscle definition. Like a lot of European players he is not much of a 2 foot jumper. ACB league teams do not do much in the way of weight training though, and he could make huge strides once he gets into an NBA conditioning program. I also note that his lack of muscle does not necessarily mean a lack of toughness. Barcelona seemed to make a special effort to cheap shot him on screens, but he handled this just fine. While I understand the genesis of the Ryan Anderson comparisons, Mirotic reminds me more of a less athletic version of the Orlando Magic era Rashard Lewis. Anderson is a true 4, while Mirotic seemed more of a combo forward at this point because he is not the rebounder Anderson is. And Mirotic would seem to offer better passing than either comparison. Whether he is truly a difference-maker for the Bulls will depend on whether he can defend and rebound like a real NBA power forward.
I know I'm a poor substitute for SST on this stuff, but I'll give you what little I've got. The opponent appears to be Zalgiris. Mostly Lithuanians. Appears to be only one American on their roster...Justin Dentmon who had cups of coffee with the Spurs and Raptors and was once named the D-League MVP. Looks like Zalgiris is currently 2-3. Just an offhand observation, but Zalgiris might want to guard Mirotic on the perimeter if they play Real Madrid again.
The gist of his value proposition seems to be both potential, and he'd give the current roster some 3pt shooting from the 4 position. The latter is a big deal, actually. If we resign Deng, it might be reasonable for Deng to guard the PF and Mirotic the SF. Shooting, right? Something Boozer does not give us from 3pt distance.
I don't know Zalgris well except for the fact that they're pretty bad. Sarunas Jasikevicius signed a relatively big money offer from the Pacers after he had a sun shine's on a dog's ass performance in the Olympics and almost singlehandedly beat Team USA. He never amounted to anything and left after his contract was up. Robertas Javtokas was a draft pick by the Spurs a long time ago and is considered a Euro vet type. There was draft chatter about Paulius Jankunas back in the day but he wasn't drafted. Martynas Pocius didn't play at Duke because he never wanted to pass the ball. He's actually a decent scorer, he's just impossible to integrate into an offense. That's all I got.
To me the pressing question is what effect will losing Boozer and replacing Mirotic have on team performance? I've read enough to conclude that Mirotic is the real deal. Although to what extent I'm not sure (is he merely pretty good or a bona fide all star?) But Boozer, for all the flack he gets, has been a cornerstone for the team the last four years and carved out his own niche on a contending team. Even if Mirotic ends up being better I think there's a good chance that he'll go through an adjustment period that takes several years to complete. Rose and Noah will be coming up on their contract extensions by then and might be ready to jump ship. The following items concern me: 1). He doesn't seem to have a lot of strength and muscle tone on his body. If this is due to a slight frame it'll always be a problem. If it's due to lack of a weight training program on his existing team it'll probably take two years to fix. This means he might be a total trainwreck on defense, even if he's technically proficient at it. Boozer, for all his troubles, can handle the strength of the NBA game and knows where to be at in Thibs' defensive schemes. 2). Most European players seem to need a few years to hit their stride. For me Kukoc is the most relevant example here. He seemed to have a similar style to Mirotic, and both were older when they came into the league (as far as rookies go). He ended up panning out, but he was considered a disappointment when he first came into the league. If we lose both Deng and Boozer this offseason and have only Mirotic to show for it I think there's a good chance the team could take a serious dip next year, which could have negative downstream effects for the team and its personnel decisions given the risk-averse tendencies of ownership. Again, none of this says anything about my forecasts for what Mirotic will ultimately turn out to be as an NBA player. (I think he's more than likely to end up very good).
I too have read elsewhere that Nikola Mirotic projects out as a 3. Not a combo forward, not a stretch 4, not Jerry Krause's ridiculous description of Fizer as a "power 3", but quite simply a small forward. That doesn't bug me; I'm quite eager to see him in red and white and black either way. What we know from Noah, Butler, Gibson, etc is that if the physical talent is there, the organization can develop the player. He's no savior in my book though, at least not until I've seen him pull 20-40 games on an NBA court against NBA competition and NBA coaches. I fear the long wait may unreasonably raise expectations that he is just that though.
I don't know if its my phone going poo poo ca ca or what but I have literally lost a half dozen attempts to post lengthy comments on this thread over the past couple of days. Perhaps for the better of the site -- but nonetheless I am finally at a PC and will try one more time. As to the stats and metrics of players coming into the league there is is place for them. You can tell who absolutely doesn't have the skill set and body to hack it in the league, who might be able to hack it and who stands a good chance of hacking it. Still, there is an art as well as a science and science has let more than one GM down over the years. Coaches drooled over Christian Laetner enough for him to make the first Dream Team (more on that concept later). Greg Oden was supposed to be able to slam dunk off a dribble off his cro-magnan brow and change the league. Mike Beasley is finally showing flashes of the po-po-potential he was supposed to have busting out of the gates. On the flip side, there are myriad players who dropped to mid-to-late first round and even second round who proved themselves invaluable once in the league but were passed over because GMs were blinded by numbers. Heck, given the apology of Rod Thorn on draft day its pretty clear the Bulls would have taken Sam Bowie over Jordan if he had been on the board at #3. To his credit, while MJ was probably a consensus lottery pick I bet a number of draft rooms that night were suprised to see a skinny 6'6" sophomore go so high. Thus, the art. As to the college team -vs- Euro team there is a reason the USA went to Dream Team mode. The best college players couldn't hang with the Euro national teams and it was getting embarrassing. Sure there is a component of that in the National teams age, experience and time together but the fact remains, the touted college talent couldn't win on a consistent basis. I would say there is no reason to believe that even a highly ranked Moo U squad would necessarily prevail over a top or even mid level Euro team on any given night. Predicting Euro success in the NBA is a bit trickier than it is in evaluating D1 talent because the Euro game plays out a bit differently and the NCAA tracks closer. However, I think it is specious to discount Euro player stats because the Euro player is not always playing against elite competition while not acknowledging that 99% of the players in D1 are destined to become really tall insurance agents, car mechanics and salesmen. And if Mirotec came here and filled the role of a solid 3 for the next 10 years I would be pleased as punch. Deng is our best player suitng up right now until Rose stops hearing footsteps and I have no confidence Luol wll be with us this time next year. Also, another shout out to GB. Nice to hear from you old friend.
It almost did it to me again. I logged in, tried to post and found myself logged out. I logged back in and finally got my post up. Weird. I find the interference with the Power of the Boerwinkle...disturbing.
Great post, TB#1. I quibble with the international basketball aspect, though. In 1988, the US team scored the bronze. We had no dream team, but did send NBA stars like Mitch Richmond, David Robinson, and Hersey Hawkins. The gold and silver medal teams featured NBA stars, too. Sabonis, Petrovic, Kukoc, Divac, Dino Rada. This seems to indicate all-star teams don't have the benefit of practices and ongoing systems. In 1984, our college team destroyed opponents. USA 97, China 49 USA 89, Canada 68 USA 104, Uruguay 68 USA 120, France 62 USA 101, Spain 68 USA 78, Federal Republic of Germany 67 USA 78, Canada 59 USA 96, Spain 65 Granted, we had the North Carolina version of Jordan playing for us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_United_States_men's_Olympic_basketball_team
Make sure you have the "remember me" check box checked when you sign in. It's at the top of every page. Or use chrome
Actually I did both...it was really a strange thing. I made sure I was logged in, my name was at the top as logged in but when I would hit submit I'd get an error message that I didn't have permission to post and needed to log in. Anyway, on the PC it seems to be working now. I need to charge my phone before I can test if its behaving now. I think I'm going to give up all this electronic stuff and mimeograph my posts and send them out by US Mail.
Get TapaTalk from the App Store. It's like $3 one time. It rocks for accessing the site. You saw about our deal with the blazers? Use the desktop and see the blazers forum, if not.
Fair enough. Still, the USA did eventually scrap the dedication to "amateur athletes" as Olympians because of the level of worldwide competition, which does seem to suggest an admission that even in the global market of a sport uniquely American, the amateur -vs- pro matchup wasn't favoring the United States any longer.
Well, amateur athletes were scrapped world wide. It wasn't a US thing. What changed is we sent a dream team after a disparate collection of talent was thrown together and had a handful of practices and lost to national teams that had NBA talent and also practiced together for years. It wasn't really fair that the Russians had been training their youth to be elite athletes under the ruse they were in the Red Army. I think that was what made the olympic rules change. The NCAA has more concentrated talent, I'd submit. The tall insurance agent thing may be true, so few elite players ever make the NBA. There are almost certainly more tall insurance agents in Europe, though. For every one Euro drafted, there are 6 or more NCAA guys drafted, no? I didn't suggest that Davidson (unranked, meh) would go out and beat the best European team. But I do think it's reasonable to think our #1 or #2 ranked team might beat their best.
Well, sure, there is probably a stronger concentration of talent in D1 basketball than Euro league basketball -- probably for the same reason there is a higher concentration of Euro soccer talent than there is US soccer talent. Kids get attracted to the most popular sports they are exposed to. Still, the number of drafted players in NCAA vs Euro League doesn't really amount to a hill of beans as to what a specific player can or will do in the NBA. Even with the "higher concentration of talent" in US colleges, the fact remains all but a select few players will ever earn a legitimate dollar playing the game. So the point stands -- until a given player is actually competing against a squad of all elite players night in and night out there is no real, true, accurate predictor of how that will pan out. Game tape will give you a hint, measurements will give you a clue, standardized weight lifting, jumping, sprint drills will give you a clue, psych evaluations will give you a clue, but until the guy suits up and sheds his warmups and gets called into games, its all a definte maybe. Some more defintie, some more maybe, but there ain't no such thing as a sure thing. That's all I'm saying.
I agree TB. However, if you are looking by eye at the euro player playing against other euro players, you're seeing him play against inferior talent. As a whole. Because of the concentration thing. I said I agree, right?
Right. And when you are eyeballing the D1 stud he's posting up that really tall insurance agent, n'est ce pas?
There are only a few players that I ever felt were can't miss by watching them. MJ wasn't one of them. Walton, Magic, Bird, Alcindor, Hakeem, David Thompson, LeBron. To think about guys we picked near the top of the draft... JWill, Fizer, Chandler, Curry. All "can't miss" guys. So, no. I don't eyeball guys against tall insurance agents.
