The actual FIBA player of the year election has started this weekend. I come back shortly to the selected players and give you also my votes.
The nominees don’t feature any surprises for me, maybe the absence of Theo Papaloukas is surprising and on the other side the selection of the "Russian" J.R. Holden may not be to everyone’s consent.
Some of the selected names can not be considered by myself in this vote, I mean I speak of people like Andris Biedrins, Luol Deng or Tony Parker, as these players have done nothing on the European scene that make them eligible for me. In my votes, I only consider the performances in European competitons, if not, TP would be the number one choice.
So first of all, I have to check the main winners of this year. And there I consider Russia and Panathinaikos for the main events. So Dimitris Diamantidis and Andrei Kirilenko come through my mind. J.R. Holden is not a selection for me, as he is not a "real" European and his impact was not regular all over the year. So for me the choice for the first place is between those two players. And I select Kirilenko for all his work and I see his impact higher than Diamantidis’s impact to PAO.
For the third place, the choice would be between Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol and Jose Calderon for me. I choose Dirk because of the better individual performance with the German NT and the loss of Spain in the Finals of the Eurobasket.
For the Young Men voting, I chose Milan Macvan because of the historic double win of U19 World Championship and U18 European Championship. Second place goes to Ricky Rubio for his overall performances during the year 2007 and a third place for Danilo Gallinari for his huge performances in the Euroleague. I absolutely encourage you to check the Young Men voting as the portrait pictures of the players look really like taken out of the ID card when the kids were 15 years old. A true must-see.
For the ladies voting, I can unfortunately not go for a vote, as I don’t follow Women basketball enough to have a good voting.
