European Prospects

The Adidas Eurocamp 2014 started today in beautiful and sunny Treviso. Once again, hundreds of coaches, scouts, executive and agents made the trip to the Italian city to get an update on some of the most interesting prospects.

The participant list did not have any highlight lottery picks this year but overall, you could expect to see some second round picks present in La Ghirada. As every year though, you could already see the tremendous length of the participants in the morning drill sessions as there were a dozen players taller than 2m10 so that the paint was quite crowded all the time making it very hard for people to score at the rim.

The first game of the day was not really on a high level despite having with Vasilije Micic the probably best prospect on the court. Micic tried to create a lot for his team mates but he went a bit too much for the fancy pass so that he had no real impact on the game. You could however easily recognize that he plays on a different level than most of the other guy on the court. Axel Toupane did a good job for his team on both ends of the floor without scoring that much though. Their team was lead by Philip Neumann in scoring as the German big showed his great fighting spirit in the paint despite being “undersized” next to other seven-footers on the court.

For the winning team, it was another German in Johannes Voigtmann who showed up with good seals in the paint and nice passes from outside. Voigtmann will not ooze you with above the rim plays but the 2m10 tall big guy did a really good job. The more unknown Ovie Soko from England showed that he has good feel for rebounding the ball but he needs to work on his shot which is not really fluid but he as good athletic tools to work with in the future. Yannis Morin was a bit of an unexpected participant but the explosive Frenchman had some interesting moments.

After a short break, the game between the French U20 National Team and Team USA was on a different level. France was driven by a good inside presence of Mam Jaiteh who looks to have developed quite well and is now able to score on a consistent basis from the low post. You have to consider though that he played against younger players so that he could dominate them physically. Another French player that showed some interesting stuff was the ultra-athletic Kevin Harley. The 1m96 tall forward exploded to the rim with great speed and finished easily above the rim. I also liked what I saw from Petr Cornelie who looks a lot stronger now and seems to know better what he can do with his body.

On the US side, the main prospect was of course Thon Maker. The seven footer showed a great game coming up with different ways of scoring. Catch and shoot three-pointer in transition, face-up jump shots out of the low post, athletic put backs, the 1997 born looks like an amazing prospect who needs though to add some physical strength in the next years but he might be the best overall prospect of the camp. He got some good support on both sides of the floor by the ultra-athletic Jaylen Brown who had 4 rejections despite being only 2m02 tall.

In the second game of the afternoon session, there has been a lot more to talk about than about the first game of the event. The surprise was the Italian athlete Eric Lombardi who was extremely active on both ends of the court with his great energy level. He showed great rebounding in his role as undersized Power Forward an was hard to stop despite being only 2m00 tall. In his team, he got good support from the Brazilian strech-four Lucas Mariano who nailed down several three pointers in a row. Marcus Eriksson also had a good game as he is one of the very few pure shooters in the camp. He knocks down the shots as easy as no one else and showed that he has no problems with the NBA 3-point line.

On the other team, Ioannis Papapetrou was a beast doing a bit of everything. The strong Greek forward looked to be the most interesting prospect in his team with his combination of skills and physical presence. He got some offensive help by the tall Moussa Diagne who finished with 10 points and 9 rebounds without doing anything specifically well. The Latvian Ojars Silins was also good in his role as outside shooter with size. Silins also created something out of the Pick and Roll which is promising for his future.

In the last game of the day, lots of players looked already really tired after a long day. Viktor Gaddefors showed some nice things and looked more active than in the morning game. On the other side, Dmitry Kulagin displayed his scoring potential as he is one of the players that can create his shot against this kind of defense. But in the end, this game did not give us a lot more information on the players as they struggled in their execution and there were a lot of turnovers and imprecise passes.