Yarone’s late Friday’s joints

Globalization – The player with the highest VAL on Zalgiris of Lithuania was US center Loren Woods. The players with the best VAL for Italian Montepaschi were Rimantas Kaukenas and Ksistof Lavrinovic from … Lithuania. In fact, the latter two combined for a VAL of 45 while all Lithuanian players on the Lithuanian team combined for a VAL of … 40. Neither Kaukenas nor Lavrinovic, by the way, ever played for Zalgiris.

New tunes – How many African big men can you think of who topped the “Best FT%” category in any league? Joventut’s Pops Mensah-Bonsu hit 4 of 4 last week, while yesterday proving he can make it even better by making 11 of 12 from the charity stripe in the loss at Roma. Can you believe this guy averaged 66.7% in the ULEB Cup and 54.6% in LEGA the past season, and that these numbers were considered decent for him?

Career low – In his long, long Euroleague career Nikola Vujcic had finished just one single game with a negative index rating: That was in last year’s semifinals, when Maccabi upset Montepaschi and Nikola had a -2 VAL. This was before his last Euroleague game with Maccabi. After the first game with Olympiacos, Vujcic set a new personal record with a VAL of -3.

Historical moment – If that’s not enough, the game against Unicaja will go down in history books as the first game ever that Nikola Vujcic finished with zero points in a Euroleague game. Vujcic had posted several games with two points, but always somehow found the way to get that ball through the rim. Last night, he missed one shot from close range, another behind the arc, and two shot attempts from the charity stripe. Nikola will surely contribute to Olympiacos down the road when the money is on the line and as long as his team won, he’s happy, but this game won’t be colored with happy shades in the boxscore archives of the Vujcic family.

Zero – Believe it or not but Le Mans, a team with two of the best shooters in Europe - David Bluthenthal and Dewarick Spencer – finished their first home game of the season with zero three pointers made of 12 attempts taken. The duo was responsible for eight of these attempts.

Just across the street – Not too far from there stood Cibona Zagreb. The days Croatian teams were considered great shooting teams are sadly long gone now, but they were just a tiny bit better than Le Mans. A long-range shooting night of 2-for-14 on Cibona’s side shone only next to Le Mans’ performance.

Happy thoughts for Pao – Obviously the biggest result of this week was the big knock out Pao got in Barcelona. The final difference was 24 after Barca were all over the game from tipoff. If you’re a Panathinaikos fan that might even be good news. On 21 March 2007, the last day of the Top 16, Pao traveled to Barcelona only to return to Athens with a very disturbing 21 point defeat. At the end of that season, Pao won their first Euroleague title since 2002.

No guards – Pao scored only 14 field goals inside the arc in the big defeat. Coach Zeljko used 10 players in his rotation, but only four were able to connect from two-point range. Three of them were big guys Fotsis, Batiste and Pekovic. The only saint in the backcourt was … Sarunas Jasikevicius, who knows the nets in Palau Blaugrana pretty well, but still won’t remember this “homecoming game” fondly.

February 14, 2008 – On that day Davor Kus missed his last Euroleague free throw shot until last night in France… Then, at Barcelona, he was only 1-for-3. Then followed a streak of 10 consecutive shots to finish the season, another 6-for-6 last week against Maccabi, and last night one of the best free throw shooters in the Euroleague was stopped. Literally. He finished the game 0-for-7 from the field and a VAL of -8, but when he went to the line in the closing seconds to secure the triumph with Cibona up by three, Kus connected just one. Enough for the win. Goodbye to the streak.

Spencer ties – The weekly followup on the battle between Dewarick Spencer and David Bluthenthal continues, and this week we saw the first tie at 1-1 in their competition “who took more shots?” Spencer contributed 14 shots and Bluth lagged behind with only 11. In between them crept JP Batista with 13. Altogether, the trio provided a little less than 2/3 of Le Mans’ shots.

Few of a kind, part I – Now check out this unique stat line made by Terence Morris. He registered a VAL of 23 but that was the only category in which he totaled double-digits: 9 points, 9 rebounds, 5 blocks, 2 assists and only four field goal attempts. Very, very few players in Europe can reach such a high index rating by doing a little bit of everything.

Stay away! - Some of those fantasy fanatics out there believe that it’s good to take the best players of the weak teams figuring that “well, at least one guy needs to have a decent game.” Panionios, in their home defeat to CSKA, proved this theory wrong. Panionios set a new season low with a team index of 28, while the top individual high on the team was no more than … 7. Several players scored a better individual VAL this week than the entire Greek team.

Few of a kind – part II – So there are very few players like Morris in Europe, and that’s why he’s in CSKA making the big bucks; but his successor in Maccabi, D’or Fischer, showed this week he can produce the same numbers. Fischer crossed the double-digit mark in scoring 11, but added 7 rebounds, 2 blocks and four drawn fouls to reach a VAL of 21.

Foul him! – Daniel Ewing finished this week as the top scorer with 32 points on a great shooting night when Prokom smashed SLUC Nancy 91-62. He hit 7 of 9 from close range, 6 of 8 in the distance and well, no shots from the foul line. Why? Because in the entire game, Ewing was fouled just once by the French defense. Ewing was hot, all right, but when you foul a player in a zone just once in a game it says a lot about the lack of aggressiveness in Nancy’s defense.

Nevertheless more than perfect – Real’s Sergio Llull, the 21-year-old guard, is one of the funnest players to follow in the Euroleague. He’s quick and athletic but most of all plays with no fear. With Real having Raul Lopez and Pepe Sanchez on the roster, Llull probably didn’t expect to see a lot of playing this year before the season tipped off, but now he’s leaving the duo veterans behind. At Partizan, Llull had a perfect game: 19 points, 7-for-7 on two-pointers, 1-for-2 from three, 2-for-2 from the line, one rebound, one assist, one steal, zero turnovers with three personal fouls and two drawn. OK, so it’s not 100% perfect, but if you followed the game you know Llull’s only missed shot and two of his fouls came in the last seconds in attempt to save his team from a loss. On paper, he’s close to perfection. For us watching, he was more than perfect.

Close to perfection on the dark side – So Llull was huge, but take a look at Pepe Sanchez’s stat line from the loss in Beograd: 22 minutes on court, 0 points, 0-of-0 on two-pointers, 0-of-0 on threes, 0-of-0 FT, zero defensive rebounds, zero offensive rebounds, one assist, one steal, two turnovers, 0 bl-f, 0 bl-a, 0 fouls-c, 0 fouls-d and the poetic justice of 0 VAL.

Italian mafia – Efes Pilsen collected a key road win in Milano, and the ones who made the difference were Charles Smith, Milos Vujanic, Michalis Kakiouzis and Bootsy Thornton. What they have in common? All played in LEGA at some point in their career.

Yarone’s Friday’s joints

Sofoklis Schortsianitis (Olympiacos) – No shot attempts at all and only one foul in 7:42 minutes. Only once before has Schortsianitis finished a Euroleague game without a single shot attempt and that was when he played only two minutes.

Milos Teodosic (Olympiacos) – How often did you get to see this Serbian scorer finish with zero three-point attempts in 14:40? It happened once last season. If this were to continue this season, it would mean Yannakis is turning the kid from a scoring machine into a true team player. Keep an eye out.

Loren Woods (Zalgiris) set a Euroleague career high with 17 points and nine defensive rebounds against Pao, who have one of the best front lines in Europe.

Tamar Slay (Avelino) had his Euroleague debut as well against a Greek team, but we won’t mention this game on his resume, with his 1-of-10 from the field and -11 VAL.

Marcus Brown (Maccabi) – On Monday, Brown took two flights to arrive in Tel Aviv in the afternoon from Kaunas. The following day, he took two more flights to get from Tel Aviv to Zagreb with his new team. In total, Brown has probably had more flights than practices with his new team. Nevertheless, he played 27:44.

Willie Deans (Zalgiris) - In his Euroleague debut, Deans finished 1-of-10 from the field and -9 VAL against Pao.

Tau Ceramica Vitoria (ACB) used the shortest rotation this week with only eight players. Efes used nine, with one player on the floor for just 22 seconds. All other teams used between nine and 12 players

Rawle Marshall (Cibona) – Simply fun to watch. 20 points, 5-of-9 from the field, 3 rebounds, 3 steals, zero turnovers, 7 fouls drawn, and 29 VAL in a Euroleague debut. All cold numbers. Bottom line: Simply fun to watch.

Dimitris Diamantidis (Panathinaikos) – The best defender award winner for the past four years and one of the top three ball stealers on The Continent played 25:42 against Zalgiris with zero steals.

Dewarick Spencer & David Bluthenthal (Le Mans) – Now this could be a weekly check: Which of these two took more shots for his team? This time, Bluth wins 14-13 and also scores better accuracy.

Theodoros Papaloukas (Olympiacos) - 2,380 days have passed between 18/04/02 and today. Back then, Theo played his last Euroleague game for the Reds; yesterday, he made his rdappearance. Back then, he finished the game with 26:53 in playing time, 8 points, 3 rebounds and a VAL of 16. Today, he played only 90 seconds less, still scored 8 points, still grabbed 3 rebounds, and notched a VAL of 15 …consistency over a six-year span.

Avelino (LEGA) – In its Euroleague debut, the small Italian team registered a VAL of 36. Often this is less than the best weekly VAL from a single player.

Armani Jeans Milano (LEGA) – The game at Moscow was far from Milano’s Euroleague debut but under the new hat and management, expectations were different. Just like Avelino, another Italian team finished a game against a Final Four contender with a poor VAL rating of 36.

Tau (ACB) and Fenerbahce (TBL) combined for 52 attempts from long range on a night on which neither surpassed 30%.

Drew Nicholas (Panathinaikos) – After three seasons in a row over 40% from long range, the US shooter started his career in green with an 0-for-3 performance from long range.

Juan Carlos Navarro (Barcelona) – La Bomba bombed on the NBA runnerups 34 points less than a week ago. Last night, against SLUC Nancy empire, Navarro celebrated his return to the Euroleague with only four points and 1-of-8 from the field.

Derrick Sharp (Maccabi) – The veteran didn’t play a single second the entire game in Zagreb. The last time a Maccabi coach chose not to use Derrick was on 6 January 2000. After a 195-game streak and 3,213 days, a new count begins. Back then, in the first week of the millennium, Maccabi was just 1-of-6 from long range. Last night they showed a poor 4-or-16. Whether that’s a coincidence or not, you be the judge.

Oguz Savas (Fenerbahce) – The Turkish center is a decent rebounder, sometimes even more, but in Vitoria spent more than 23 minutes on the court and finished without a single rebound. This happened to Savas only once all of last season and back then, he played only five minutes.

Milos Vujanic (Efes) is officially back. The Serbian point guard beat his former team by a single point and was his team’s top scorer with 17 and just a single missed shot. The last time Vujanic scored more than 17 in a Euroleague game was on 9 March 2005 (that’s 1,324 days if you’re curious), when his Fortitudo Bologna won at Zalgiris by a single point as well and Vujanic had 18.

Real Madrid (ACB) – No fewer than eight players wrote a double-digit VAL in the 21-point cruise to victory against Olimpija.

Ibrahim Jabber, Ray Allan, Rodrigo De La Fuente, Brandon Jennings and Sanice Becirovic (Roma) – Coach Repesa’s backcourt combined for 4-of-18 inside the arc against Alba.

Nana Mensah-Bonsu (Joventut) had a very busy night under both baskets. Around Joventut’s rim he blocked three shots but on the other end was blocked three times as well. Not many players get to experience such activity on both ends on the floor.

Partizan (YUBA) and Maccabi (BSL) – Both lost by a single basket difference, the smallest margins of the first week, but in both cases it was after a three pointer at the buzzer that only made it look closer than it really was.

Alba (BBL) – No less than 1,723 days, since 4 February 2004, when Alba won their last Euroleague game. It was a 16 point triumph over Efes. John Best, Jovo Stanojevic, Marko Pesic and DeJuan Collins were the top scorers for Alba then. Not a single player on Alba has survived on the team since that season.

Brandon Jennings (Lottomatica) – The most standout number in the game that took Jennings’ Euroleague virginity is his 22 minutes with just a single turnover. Brandon also took nine shots from the field, more than any other Roma player yesterday.

Montepaschi (LEGA) were shooting better outside the arc (48% with 12 made) than inside it (40.5% with 15 made) in the nine-point win over Prokokm.

Boniface Ndong, Marcus Haislip and Robert Archibald (Unicaja) – The team’s three big men were also its three top scorers with 14, 13 and 11 points, respectively, over Le Man’s bigs.

Alain Koffi (Le Mans) – The athletic big man has finished each of his five seasons in the ULEB Cup and Euroleague with seven to nine assists total. On Wednesday night at Unicaja, the local stat guys bestowed him with no less than three, obviously a career high, and a great start to set a new season record as well.

(In case you are too shy to leave a comment here, you can always contact Yarone by sending him an email at arbel@ballineurope.com)

After the Olympics: What’s the future of Serbia?

Well, there were no Olympic games for Serbia this time out, but with a 7-1 record in the qualification round for Eurobasket 2009, Dusan Ivkovic’s team has already shown their potential for upcoming years. Built around a core for the future with eight players born in 1985 or before (Novica Velickovic, Zoran Erceg, Uros Tripkovic, Kosta Perovic, Milenko Tepic, Milos Teodosic, Boban Marjanovic and Stefan Markovic), it looks like Serbia can be considered as a legit medal candidate for London 2012.

After all, if one of these guys does not progress as expected the whole team will not collapse: Several other very interesting players are on the bubble to join the senior national team after their dominance in the youth competitions where Serbian teams have seen the Gold Rush coming back to them. Particularly the highly successful 1987 generation around Milenko Tepic, Milos Teodosic, Dragan Labovic and Vladimir Stimac set new landmarks by winning the gold medal in every youth category: U16, U18 and U20. Additionally, all of these younger players don’t seem to have a super-promising near NBA future so that they can play the summer competitions without problems.

What is also interesting is to see that, for the moment, just one player in the roster is older than 30: Dusan Kecman. Though the shooting guard is very important for the team when it comes to spot-shooting and team effort, I have some doubts we will see him through 2012. The problem is that I don’t see anybody on the roster who possesses his quality shooting at the moment. Somebody like Mladen Jeremic could take over this role in the future eventually. The rest of the guard rotation is set for the coming years, with both Teodosic and Markovic already having important roles in their respective teams and Milos Vujanic trying to relaunch his club career.

The wing position is also nicely filled with the scoring talent of Novica Velickovic and the long-distance shooting of Luka Bogdanovic. Milenko Tepic can help out at small forward and Dusko Savanovic had some interesting minutes in the two games he played. Additionally, somebody like Tadija Dragicevic should be able to join the team as well as Marko Keselj. Both are playing for Crvena Zvezda next season and Svetislav Pesic is not considered the worst coach to make them better players.

At the inside positions, Nenad Krstic and Zoran Erceg are solid starters who still have a lot of upside. Kosta Perovic should see minutes on the floor again this season, and Boban Marjanovic is a great combination of size and power for the future. Additionally, you have the massive Miroslav Raduljica and Milan Macvan, who are trying to make the step from dominant force at the U20 level to contributor on the senior teams.

As you can see, Serbia is not lacking in firepower for their respective teams. I still have some doubts about a high-quality sniper from the three-point area, as their current top gunner Uros Tripkovic has already experienced lots of ups and downs. And you may have noticed that I did not speak at all about the Serbian “stars” playing currently in the NBA; it doesn’t look like they are in Dusan Ivkovic’s plans whatsoever. So the possible roster for London 2012 could be the following.

Guards: Teodosic, Tepic, Tripkovic, Vujanic.

Forwards: Velickovic, Keselj, Bogdanovic, Macvan, Erceg.

Centers: Krstic, Marjanovic, Perovic.

Euroleague transfer analysis: Group D

The last of the four groups in the 2008-2009 edition of the Euroleague features some high-quality teams, including defending champion CSKA Moscow and Spain’s biggest name in Real Madrid.

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