European Prospects

The second day of the 2012 edition of the Adidas Eurocamp is history now and you can probably say already now that it was the best of the three days. Some players participated today that were not there yesterday or have left already while the overall competition level went up.

Evan Fournier was of course the story of the day as lots of people consider him as the only potential 1st round pick of the NBA Draft 2012. Fournier who comes from a slight injury was certainly not in his best shape and he did not excel at the camp but underlined his potential. You can not judge him by what you have seen in Treviso alone as he was showing a lot more during the regular season with his French team of Poitiers. Nevertheless, the camp probably did not improve nor hurt his stock. It will now be about the workouts that he has planned in the next weeks to decide how high or low he can go.

Tomas Satoransky already left Treviso today to fly back to the United States to do some individual workouts. He only came back from Chicago for one day in Italy which certainly did not help him to perform at his best level because of jet lag problems. So there has not been much news on him today. Another player who is not there anymore is Maxi Kleber. The German forward injured his hand in the first game he played today and had to be brought to the hospital for controls. Currently, we do not know if the hand is broken or not but it is a big blow for him and the German U20 National Team if he can not play with them this summer. According to the latest news though, the injury is not as bad as expected.

The other story of the day was the game of Rudy Gobert with the French U20 National Team. The big guy from Cholet is preparing the European Championship this summer with his team and joined the squad during the weekend. Being measured outside the official Vitals test by the camp, Gobert had amazing numbers and broke all records in terms of wingspan. But he is not only a physical exception, he showed some tremendous progress in his game as well. The minutes he got with Cholet helped him a lot and he is now a serious target in the paint for his guards. Not really polished in his low post game, Gobert plays above the rim without any problem and had some impressive dunks against the shorter Russian U20 National Team. If he can add some weight, pay attention.

The first game in the morning had some interesting facts next to Fournier playing here (12 pts 5/9 FGs, 3stls, 5tos, 4asts, 6 fouls) like the Turkish Ilkan Karaman who once again showed his nice athletic abilities, rebounding skills and good shooting touch from outside. He finished with 7 points and 12 rebounds in just 24 minutes. We had a longer story on him just before the camp, looks like it was good timing. Olek Czyz continues to impress scouts as well with his big body, athleticism and good shot. Being undersized to play PF on the highest level, the Duke and University of Nevada product should have helped his stock on the European soil dramatically by his games here as he was more or less an unknown by most of the teams outside of Poland before the camp. He had 12 points and 3 rebounds in his game this morning. Oleksandr Lypovyy is also playing a good camp. The tall and long guard from Ukraine showed nice shooting touch and good drives running the point guard spot for his team over long stretches. Darko Planinic showed some interesting presence in the paint as well even if his upside probably is limited. He scored 11 points and drew 6 fouls in 27 minutes on the court.

Next to Gobert and Fournier, Livio Jean-Charles and Leo Westermann were the main running forces of the French U20 National Team defeating Russia. Jean-Charles is playing full time PF now (France tried him on SF during some time) and he is doing an amazing job off the ball; rebounding, screening, hustling, diving. He has not a very regular shot which prevents him from being a top level prospect but with his athletic abilities and attitude, he is really an exciting player to watch for the next years. Westermann who is looking already like a veteran in some situations is not really a player who can excel in such situations as here in Treviso. To get a better idea of him, it is certainly a good choice to watch League or Championship games in the future. The tall guard had only 3 points but 4 rebounds, 4 steals, 5 assists and only 2 turnovers. On the Russian side, Dmitry Kulagin injured his foot and had to leave the court quite early. So it was more or less Vladislav Trushkin who took all the scoring duties but it was not enough for his team to have a chance against France. He finished with 14 points, 4 rebounds and 3 steals.

In the first afternoon game, Daniel Diez from Spain showed good aggressiveness and scoring skills. Being some kind of a mixture of a PF and SF, Diez finished with 13 points and 5 rebounds showing great hustle and tough drives. He helped his team to win with the help of the young Nikola Ivanovic who had 13 points on jump shots while stealing 4 balls and having 3 assists. Andrew Albicy was not in a scoring day but showed that he can run a team (5 assists) and be a threat on defense. Izzet Turkyilmaz is a player that continued to impress me with his ability to run and jump. He added a good shooting touch today as well knocking down a three pointer with very fluid mechanics.

For the last game of the day between an All-Star Selection and the Australian Institute of Sports, I do not have any stats yet. However, the most dominating guy was once again Tornike Shengelia from Georgia. He nearly scored at will driving to the basket and finishing with the contact against the Australian bigs. Paul Lacombe also showed his overall backcourt skills and concluded a very good day for him. Artem Klimenko is one of the names to follow for the next years as the Russian big guy underlined his talent here in Treviso. Quite mobile and athletic for a player of his size, Klimenko was nearly an unknown until this camp and his name is on the tables of nearly every European scout right now.