The organizers of the Nike Hoop Summit announced this week the rosters for the World Select team that will play against the best High School players of the United States in Portland the 12th April.
I you take a closer look to the roster, you will see that it only features 5 real Europeans in the 11 men team. I can understand that the team should represent the whole world but having four High School players in the World team is a bit too much for me. However, let’s take a closer look at the Euros and the other guys that play in Europe for the moment.
Diego Gerbaudo from Argentina, but playing in Real Madrid will share the PG duties together with the Lithuanian Zygimantas Janavicius. But have no high level experience so far and they will probably face a big pressure by the American guards. While Gerbaudo is averaging about 5ppg with the Second team of Real in the fourth Spanish league, Janavicius is coming up with 15ppg and 5.3apg in the second Lithuanian league.
Oleksandr Kolchenko, who will be the three point gunner of the team is actually playing with Khimik in the Ukrainian Superleague and is averaging there 3.7ppg at 27% three point shooting. What he is capable of doing is absolute pure scoring as he showed it in the Qualifiation round to the Eurobasket last summer where he nailed 30pts against Israel.
The wings are populated by different players with African backgrounds, here of course we have to take a closer look at Serge Ibaka who is actually excelling in the 2nd Spanish league and the German hope Tim Ohlbrecht. The 2m10 tall power forward has played a correct Euroleague season but he is really handicapped by his repeating injuries.
The bigs will be Alexis Ajinca who is playing an up and down season with Hyères-Toulon in the first French division, but he came up with a huge Tournoi des As which boosted his Draft stock somehow and the Serbian giant Boban Marjanovic. The 2m22 tall kid from Vrsac started the season well but an injury took him a bit out of the rotation. He will have a tough job with Ajinca to guard the paint against the high-flying US roster.
We all remember what a good performance during the Nike Hoop Summit means: a sky rocketing NBA Draft stock. Just ask this blonde innocent guy from Finland…
[youtube VHBUoVgHKs0]
