Welcome to the NBA, Rudy and Nicolas!

The NBA preseason has started. And while some NBA teams are heading to Europe and other European teams are playing in the United States, I had a particular look at the game of the Portland Trailblazers as they feature two of the most promising European talents making the big step to the United States this summer. I speak of Nicolas Batum and Rudy Fernandez.

Both were still very calm when it comes to scoring, but showed that Europeans have made a big step in terms of athleticism. For Rudy, this is also an opportunity to again play with Sergio Rodriguez, reforming a combo that has worked marvelously well for the Spanish national team in previous years. So now it may be surprising to Portland fans to see what they can do together and they immediately showed their knowledge of each other’s game right from the start.

If you watch the video through to the end, you also see Nicolas Batum’s only basket in the game, a pretty nice one as Blazer’s Edge also reports. But what I liked most in the website’s reportage about Batum’s play was this part:

I believe in a post-game interview he told our own Ben Golliver that in homage to the great Darrell Dawkins who named all of his slams, he’s christening that dunk “Sophia.”

I don’t know if Batum really made this statement, but I guess that neither his dunk would have made the Chocolate Thunder proud nor that Darryl would have ever named a dunk “Sophia” as the names he used were a bit sexier like The Chocolate-Thunder-Flying, Robinzine-Crying, Teeth-Shaking, Glass-Breaking, Rump Roasting, Bun-Toasting, Wham-Bam-I-Am Jam.