<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Across the United States, if the headlines regarding the eight-player exchange between the Warriors and Indiana Pacers on Jan. 17 mentioned any players by name, it was usually Al Harrington, Stephen Jackson, Troy Murphy or Mike Dunleavy. In European and Middle Eastern locations from Lithuania to Spain to Israel, there was a different spin. There the news read simply, "Saras traded to Warriors." "Saras" is headline writers' shorthand for Sarunas Jasikevicius, and although the 30-year-old Lithuanian was considered by most NBA experts to be the third-most important piece in the deal for the Warriors, behind Harrington and Jackson, his worldwide outreach far surpasses that of the other seven players in this deal combined. "I've never been over there, but I heard he's Jordan," Harrington said of Jasikevicius, who got married last summer to Linor Abargil, otherwise known as Miss World 1998. "I told him I'm going to go with him, to see if he's got people following him everywhere." American critics see the 6-foot-4 Jasikevicius as a guy who's averaged less than 20 minutes a game as a backup guard. On the other side of the Atlantic, Saras is a wizardly floor general whose departure from Maccabi Tel Aviv to the Pacers in 2005 drove a film crew to get several dozen teammates, opponents, coaches and other notables to implore him to stay in Israel. "He was a star from the moment he got there," said Shimrit Berman, an Israeli journalist who covered basketball there for more than 10 years and is now studying at UC Berkeley's School of Journalism. Jasikevicius, who went undrafted in 1998 after averaging 7.7 points per game for four seasons at Maryland, took over the unofficial mantle of "the Best Player in Europe" after Manu Ginobili joined the San Antonio Spurs in 2002. In each of the next three seasons, once with FC Barcelona and twice with Maccabi Tel Aviv, Jasikevicius led his teams to the Euroleague championship. He also earned MVP honors for pushing Lithuania to win the 2003 European Championships and scored 28 points in a victory over the Americans in the early rounds of the 2004 Athens Olympics. "Any national team is going to be big," Jasikevicius said of his fame in his homeland. "In Lithuania, some people say basketball is our second religion, but a lot of people say it's our first religion." Said Jackson: "Sarunas is just as experienced as any NBA player in this league, because he knows what it takes to win a championship, even though it's a different level (of competition)." Jasikevicius brought that experience back stateside by signing a $12 million, three-year deal with the Pacers. That contract has one year remaining after this season, a $4 million player option that Jasikevicius said he plans to exercise. "As a European player, (the NBA) was the last thing left to do," Jasikevicius said. "I knew I was good enough to play here for many years, but a good opportunity never presented itself. After the last time we won (the Euroleague title), I pretty much knew this was going to be it, I'm going to have to make that move, find a new thing to conquer." Donn Nelson, president of basketball operations for the Dallas Mavericks and son of Warriors coach Don Nelson, has been an assistant coach for the Lithuanian national team since 1990, so he's literally watched Jasikevicius grow up. He was not surprised in the least by Jasikevicius' methodical, calculated route to the NBA. "Sarunas is one of the smartest guys I've ever been around. He's really mapped out his career very wisely," Donn Nelson said. "I think he understood coming out of Maryland that there were some things he needed to upgrade in his game. He needed to be stronger and quicker, to forge his game to be more congruent with the NBA's style. ... If you look back on his career right now, there's not many notches he doesn't have on his belt."</div> Source
Cabbages may struggle, but I still like his game, as slow as he is. I don't like a whole lot of slow players (given that I think many are kind of soft too), but he is one of my faves for the guard position. I think he does a lot of positive things, but any coach like Nelson will have his biases and prejudices. I don't think Nelson is totally right regarding his opinions, but I do think if we want to go all the way and make the playoffs, we have to not be so "in-between" and present ourselves with a more radical offense. We have to be critical of player talent and make something dominant to compete with. Fastbreak offense could work in theory for the short term, but I hope in the long run we develop a presence on both ends of the floor, or else we're going to be eliminated very quickly by teams that do a little bit of both and are better than us at both ends. I think our goal is to be the dominant team, so we must improve all the areas of weaknesses we have. Otherwise, we'll be the Sonics or the Clippers. We'll be aiming very low in terms of what we want to do with this franchise.
Cabbage's D scares me. Murphy,at his worst.was an obstacle a guy had to veer around. Cabbages could be replaced in the zone by a little orange traffic cone. His playmaking,shot selection need to be first class to offset...and I am waiting to see that part.
<div class="quote_poster">REREM Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">Cabbage's D scares me. Murphy,at his worst.was an obstacle a guy had to veer around. Cabbages could be replaced in the zone by a little orange traffic cone. His playmaking,shot selection need to be first class to offset...and I am waiting to see that part.</div> I totally agree. If we're going to compete we gotta go all the way and get guys who can pick up the slack in zone defense. That's pretty much eliminates all the slow guys. We can't have the team out there that are half slow, half fast type mix of players and especially ones that aren't consistent shots and take a while to get him rhythm.
