Sam Mitchell doesn’t watch European basketball
October 1, 2007 by Tobias
This is what I just learned from Mark Woods who is a sports journalist and blogging on the UK version of the NBA.
Sam spent two years of his career in Europe. Unlike Memphis’ Marc Iavaroni, who told me his time in Italy and Spain, influenced his thoughts on basketball, the reigning NBA Coach of the Year doesn’t appear to see much merit in the European game. In fact, he claims he didn’t watch any of the recent Eurobasket tournament - even though Jose Calderon and Jorge Garbajosa, his Raptors charges, were in action there.
“I played in Europe so I know that the game is totally different,” Mitchell said. Totally? That’s an exaggeration perhaps.
“If you have 16 points a game in Europe you are considered a high scorer.” And so…? Is the new NBA order not preaching shared offense and defense-first?
“There are a lot more things you can do to slow the game down than in an NBA game where it is more wide open.” Actually I’d argue there are just as many in Europe, if not more, simply because there’s a much greater commitment to team defense.
So Sam, when you’re over, take a good look around. Soak it in. You might even learn something.
Now I know that Sam Mitchell is a good and smart coach - well he has to be since he is the coach of the year, right? But I must say that things have changed in Europe and you just can’t ignore it especially when some of your best players are from Europe.
I will let you know how the training camp for the Raptors goes in Italy - especially the game against an Euroleague team: Lottomatica Roma. Maybe I will get a chance to ask Sam if he really did not watch ONE game of the European Championship…
EDIT: I just talked to FIBA basketball guru Jeff Taylor and I got some interesting news which I did not know. He tells me that Sam did not play his Europeans Bargnani and Garbajosa in the beginning until GM Colangelo told him to play them.
We know the rest of the story - the Raptors did well and Sam ended up being coach of the year…
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Nice article on Sam Mitchell; or was he the actual focus of the article, I don’t know. Bottom line, everyone just isn’t going to be a fan of euroball. It’s not a knock on euroball. Sam just has so much on his plate that he just doesn’t have the time. He better come around to showing an appreciation because the Raptors GM is all about international ballers; so am I. It’s still no clear cut way to judge an international ballers talents to translate over to the NBA. And that’s to be said with American ballers as well, to an extent. We all knew that Dirk was going to be great. We knew that Petrovic would be nice. But on the flip, how many thought Ginobili would do so well. And many consider Kukoc to have not reach his full potential. Nonetheless, Toni has NBA rings that he was a clear contributor to!!!
Until last year Sam Mitchell actually had a reputation as being a rather poor coach, and there was speculation that he might be fired or not have his contract renewed even after he was officially awarded the Coach of the Year. Rumor had it that Toronto wanted to hire Marc Iavaroni, who would have fit GM Bryan Colangelo’s tastes better.
Typical american arrogancy.
Interesting…Greg Popovich couldnt wait to see game footage of a greek team they played that i believe that was led by a serbian coach because he wanted to see the motion plays they used against the Spurs.
Pop was excited dor pete’s sake….that never happens!
And since Mike was right about Mitchell, Ill take Pop’s views on this topic over the coach of the year.
Read the excellent article about what the Spurs coach says about euro ball:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/basketball/nba/spurs/stories/MYSA101507.Spurs.Pop.Panathinaikos.en.319dc9b.html
[...] already found out that Sam doesn’t really follow European basketball - with five guys from Europe on his team. Now we found out through the [...]