European Prospects

The 2nd day of the Adidas Eurocamp was marked by two very different stand-out individual performance with Dwight Howard doing the Haka with the Rugby U20 National Team of New Zealand and the Boris Barac shooting clinic from behind the three-point line.

In the first game of the morning, Tomas Satoransky continued where he finished the first day being very active in the back court and running the point efficiently in a role of energizer and scorer mainly. The athletic Czech scored 18pts and grabbed 6rebs but turned the ball over 4 times. He got some support by the less flashy but very skilled and always under control Italian Nicolo Melli who had 10pts, 7rebs, 5asts but also 6tos. Josep Franch had one of the more spectacular plays of the day when he rejected a dunk attempt of the 2m10 tall Angel Garcia on the fast break. Big-motor Sarra Camara scored 9pts for the losing team added by 7rebs, 2stls and 1 blk while Andrija Milutinovic shot like crazy with 1/10 3 pointers.

One of the highlights of the camp according to the schedule was the game between the U19 National Teams of Croatia and Serbia. While the Serbs already showed in the Saturday opener that their team is not really working together and putting apparently a lot of importance on the age hierarchy, Croatia came to Treviso with a very mixed group of players with prospects born between 1995 and 1992. While talented players like Aleksandar Cvetkovic, Nenad Miljenovic or Luka Mitrovic barely see any playing time, on the Croatian side it was the 1995 born phenomenon Mario Hezonja who put on a show right from the start and impressed the followers in attendance who never had seen him before. With his complete package of athleticism, size and basketball skills, he finished the game with 17pts. However, the silent star of the team was Boris Barac who had one of these days where everything falls. The forward scored 6 out 6 NBA three pointers to finish the game as top scorer with 32 points and 5 rebounds. The always active and energizing Marko Ramljak also came up with a good game as he had 12pts, 5rebs and 5stls. We do not really know what is the problem with the Serbian team right now but they did not look really good here in Treviso with probably the exception of Nikola Siladi. The Power forward played well during the two games so far and looks like he had matured mentally and improved his three point shooting.

After the lunch break, the games became less exciting as the players started to get tired in the very warm gym. Team 2 managed to score a probable record low 3 points in the first quarter of the Game #6 but under the effort of Robin Benzing, Paul Lacombe and Mindaugas Kuzminskas, they  came back into the game and even had the chance to win it in the end. The German forward is actually having a good camp showing some improvement in his aggressiveness and presence in the rebound. He scored 9pts and pulled down 6 boards for the losing team. Lacombe hit a couple of threes in important moments when they were cutting the lead while the Zalgiris forward was present in his typical all-around playing style with 9pts, 3rebs, 4stls, 2asts and 5 drawn fouls. On the winners side, Adam Hanga is one of the names that stood out again as the Hungarian had 16pts and 4stls for is team. He played a great camp so far and he has excellent athletic skills to work with. He was never really mentioned in the most prominent Mock Drafts but he might have found some fans among the NBA scouts during the camp. Despite not having big numbers, Raul Neto was doing a good job so far as well. The 1992 born Brazilian has a natural feel for the game and reads very well what the defense gives his team.

While the Brazilian Lucas Nogueira “Bebe” shut his camp down, the organizers announced the arrival of the Australian Ater Majok as a late addition on Sunday afternoon. In a surprise move before the day closing All-Star game, title sponsor Adidas let their poster boy Dwight Howard come in together with the U20 All-Blacks team in order to do the Haka dance. Howard really seemed to enjoy this as he was all smiling.

Most of the 20 players selected to play in the “official” All-Star game of the camp looked really exhausted and did not really help themselves with what they showed at the end of a 8-9 hours long day in the gym. However, the Brazilian-Spanish Augusto Lima played an excellent game with 20pts at 8/8 FGs, 12 rebounds, 6 steals and 2 blocks to come up with a 41 valorization number. Mindaugas Kurminskas played well again as the Lithuanian had 21pts and Camara had 15pts and 10rebs for the winning Adidas Black team. On the losing side, Hanga was more or less the only satisfaction with his 16pts.