D-Game #1: The Brazilian Menace Fort Wayne Mad Ants vs. Iowa Energy

[blackjitsu]

Basketball IQ comes with experience playing. Bruno hasn't been playing. Being dropped in to the team setting he has been with a team shared by 1/3 of the league is less than ideal. Raps really need their own d league team.


As for statements regarding quality of play prior to being drafted, I do not believe under 18 Brazilian league is better than second division Greece. At least Giannis was playing against men.

Not having a D League team is a mess. This should have already been fixed. Not sure what the Raps are doing, it's not a scenario where they should wait for the perfect scenario.

Bruno was up with the Senior team last year, as well as the Junior team. One would assume that playing with the senior team with NCAA vets, Euro vets and former NBA players would be a better place to learn -- even if he was just on their practice/ non-league roster -- than the level Giannis was at.

I don't %100 agree with walker, I just think it's a viable argument to make.

[white men can't jump]

Not having a D League team is a mess. This should have already been fixed. Not sure what the Raps are doing, it's not a scenario where they should wait for the perfect scenario.

Bruno was up with the Senior team last year, as well as the Junior team. One would assume that playing with the senior team with NCAA vets, Euro vets and former NBA players would be a better place to learn -- even if he was just on their practice/ non-league roster -- than the level Giannis was at.

I don't %100 agree with walker, I just think it's a viable argument to make.

Why would one assume that his Brazilian team is a better level than what Giannis had? Brazil's basketball league probably doesn't rival any first or second tier league in the better Euro leagues. How many of the various vets which you allude to were actually out there? Araujo (a guy who couldn't keep a job in the Chinese league, nevermind the NBA)? Barbosa (who's been near-useless at the NBA level for 2-3 years)? Seems like a pretty damn shitty league...You hear a lot more about guys going to Europe, China and even Australia before you hear about anyone going to Brazil. I'd say that Giannis was playing at a higher level both in the junior and senior situations he was in last year (similar to Bruno), and it shouldn't even really be a discussion.

I think Bruno's in the best situation he could be in. I think with his youth and the language barrier he'd face everywhere, he wouldn't get better tutelage or more opportunity in most leagues in the world. And in the leagues where he might get opportunity, they're freakin awful and probably not the places you want him to try and develop as an NBA prospect.

It is a big problem for the Raptors that they don't have their own D-League team....but honestly, Bruno's still going to be very raw next year, and will probably still just be an end of bench wing who'll need D-League stints to get reps in. *So hopefully, they have it figured out by next year, when he'll be developed enough to have at least a featured role on a D-League team (and still probably just be a 5th/6th wing player with little playing time in the NBA).

[blackjitsu]

WMCJ: Giannis wasn't in any of Europe's better leagues. Did you watch the footage? It was on par with high level AAU -- at most.

The reason why Giannis was drafted was because Zaragosis bought the rights for himself and his younger brother (who is in high school in Wisconsin). If he got signed, the opportunity to get him across the water would have been delayed.

I never said that it was the greatest league in the world, but his team won the FIBA Americas tournament -- they are a internationally respected team... I never said it was near top Euroleague play.

What I said was that the coaching available to him was significantly higher level than what Giannis had available to him. Giannis was not discovered until the year he was drafted -- that summer was the first year he played for his national junior team... the team he played for isn't close to as profitable as the multi-million dollar team that Bruno played for. Simply less resources.

Honestly, if you watched the games, or researched the teams you would understand how wrong you are. The footage is out there, the value of the teams is out there, etc...

If you want to diss professional basketball players that's your lane. Barbosa's body might be useless but his mind is not -- look at that lineup. In recent history 5 former or present NBA players have spent time playing for Pinhieros: Jamison Brewer, Barbosa, Hoffa, Alex Garcia and Bruno. Players on Pinhieros have played in every major pro league: From Israel to the Adriatic, Spain to China.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esporte...etball)#Roster

Meanwhile, the team Giannis played for was...bad. Half of their "notable" players are related to Giannis. There's no way he had even close to the calibre of coaching that Bruno was getting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filathlitikos_B.C.

I agree that Bruno is in the best situation for his development: most pro leagues concentrate their efforts on players who play, or are from a local region (Val is an example of both). Whatever he gets from the D League and the Raps will be better than Brazil. Pinhieros has no motivation to develop a player whose rights are held elsewhere, and he wouldn't start for them either.

[white men can't jump]

WMCJ: Giannis wasn't in any of Europe's better leagues. Did you watch the footage? It was on par with high level AAU -- at most.

The reason why Giannis was drafted was because Zaragosis bought the rights for himself and his younger brother (who is in high school in Wisconsin). If he got signed, the opportunity to get him across the water would have been delayed.

I never said that it was the greatest league in the world, but his team won the FIBA Americas tournament -- they are a internationally respected team... I never said it was near top Euroleague play.

What I said was that the coaching available to him was significantly higher level than what Giannis had available to him. Giannis was not discovered until the year he was drafted -- that summer was the first year he played for his national junior team... the team he played for isn't close to as profitable as the multi-million dollar team that Bruno played for. Simply less resources.

Honestly, if you watched the games, or researched the teams you would understand how wrong you are. The footage is out there, the value of the teams is out there, etc...

If you want to diss professional basketball players that's your lane. Barbosa's body might be useless but his mind is not -- look at that lineup. In recent history 5 former or present NBA players have spent time playing for Pinhieros: Jamison Brewer, Barbosa, Hoffa, Alex Garcia and Bruno. Players on Pinhieros have played in every major pro league: From Israel to the Adriatic, Spain to China.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esporte...etball)#Roster

Meanwhile, the team Giannis played for was...bad. Half of their "notable" players are related to Giannis. There's no way he had even close to the calibre of coaching that Bruno was getting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filathlitikos_B.C.

I agree that Bruno is in the best situation for his development: most pro leagues concentrate their efforts on players who play, or are from a local region (Val is an example of both). Whatever he gets from the D League and the Raps will be better than Brazil. Pinhieros has no motivation to develop a player whose rights are held elsewhere, and he wouldn't start for them either.

Wow, ridiculous statements here.....

Did you watch the footage? There's very limited footage of Bruno, mostly from a couple of games he played for the senior side of Pinheiros, and some Bball without borders stuff....Meanwhile, much of the Giannis footage is from who the fuck knows? Much of it clearly looks like him playing in the junior league for Filathlitikos.

So comparing the footage is a bit flawed to begin with, and even there your analysis is pretty pitiful. If you think what Giannis was playing was similar to AAU, what about Bruno? That's not markedly better. It's not div 1 NCAA, that's for sure. At best it would be lower tier NCAA competition...and again, that's the senior team, that he spent less time with. So the stuff you think looks like AAU for Giannis likely is mostly U18 team, and thus basically high school level ball. Meanwhile the Pinheiros footage, the only real difference is that it's men, but the quality of ball is arguably still AAU level.

Notable players? Pinheiros hasn't done anythign in the Brazilian league. They're just one of the "bigger" teams that can afford to pay people. But most of their notable players are crappy Brazilian players who never had much of any real career in basketball. . The only real notable player is Barbosa, who keeps going back to play in Brazil when he has no NBA contract....but that hardly means it's high-calibre basketball. The rest are terrible players who couldn't catch on in any decent league in the world.

Obviously Giannis was on a small crappy team in the Greek league with no "notable" players, but that team produced him and his brother, and three other greek kids who jumped up to the first tier Greek men's league (which is much better than Brazilian top tier). In other words it was probably a well coached team for a stretch, preparing kids to make the jump into one of the top leagues in the world. Meanwhile, Pinheiros has Rafael "I washed out of every league, even China" Araujo. Or crapfests like Jamison Brewer (so he's notable to you basically because he's American, right?), who couldn't get a job in Europe except for crappy teams in Belgium and Ukraine, and Alex Garcia.

Seems to me you're basing your opinion on how rich the teams are, and that's nonsense.

Bruno produced 4.8 pts and 3.1 rebs in limited minutes/games(17) for the senior side of Pinheiros. Giannis produced 9.5 pts and 5 reb in 22 games for the senior side of Filathlitikos, which is probably around the same level as the top tier league in Brazil. Meanwhile, Giannis' team is a stepping stone for young guys to make it up into the A1 league....Bruno's team is where failed careers go to die...

I don't see any evidence to support that Bruno had to get better coaching from his Brazilian team than Giannis would've got from his Greek team. I see lots of jumping to conclusions based on limited/poor evidence.

*Oh, and Giannis would've had a cheap buyout at Zaragoza that would've made no difference for him changing leagues. Probably didn't go because he had better opportunity to develop in his then current situation in Greece, rather than go be a benchwarmer on an ACB team.