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Adidas Eurocamp Treviso 2010: Day 1

June 6th, 2010 · 1 Comment

The Adidas Eurocamp started yesterday in front of all the 30 NBA Teams being represented in the La Ghirada Sports Complex in Treviso. After I missed the morning sessions due to a late arrival, here we go for a recap of the afternoon session of the first day of the only European based Pre-Draft camp.

The day started with a nice shooting effort of Matias Nocedal in the morning game as the Argentinean hit 5/6 of his three point attempts. On the other side, it was Uros Lukovic who was the top scorer with 11pts and 4rebs. Not much else to say about the game as I was not present in the gym.

In the first game of the afternoon, it was the first part of the Edwin Jackson show during Day 1. The French guard, that spent one season in Rouen playing a lot of minutes was really impressive on the court as he was present on anything and was one of the few guys that showed some will and energy. As his long distance shot was falling and he did not need to take care of the PG duties. he could really excel and finished with 15pts. He got some support by Vladimir Dasic who is still showing excellent basketball skills but the question marks remain around his mental presence after everything that happened throughout the ACB season. The Montenegrin had 8pts, 7rebs and 4stls. On the other side, Dejan Musli, who looks once again a bit slimmer, was the main offensive weapon with 10pts, 4rebs and 2blks. The Serbian Center showed some good confidence in his dribble as you could see him several times bring up the ball and with his more reduced body, he looks a lot more elegant than 2 years ago. Bogdan Bogdanovic scored 10pts as well for Team 1 that lost however 44-59 against Team 2.

The second game of the afternoon was a real nightmare to watch as Team 3 was not great and Team 4 was even worse. Semen Shashkov did some nice things as he scored 14pts but it did not look like being really difficult to score against a team that was even weaker on defense than it was on offense. Without any serious PG, it was Abdoulaye M’Baye who had to run the 1 over long stretches and he showed that this is not really his position. He finished with 8pts though but it was not really a beauty to watch.

The best game of the day was by far the match-up between the first Adidas Eurocamp All-Star selection and the Croatian U20 National Team. Edwin Jackson once again raised his level and was clearly the best man for the campers while Toni Prostran did all he could to get the win for Croatia. Both guards put up a scoring show in the second half and it was the very motivated Jackson that could lead his team to the win. On the Croatian side, Mario Delas showed his smooth elegant forward game while Dino Butorac showed some nice three-point shooting as well. Jackson finished with 17pts, 7rebs and 4asts while Dejan Musli did some damage in the paint with 17pts as well and 9rebs.

Compared to last year, the level of the camp looks a lot lower this year. The absence of any 2010 first round material is flagrant and the younger generations did not really look as impressive as the years before. The presence of Chinese or Brazilian guys is an interesting asset when it comes to diversification of the talent pool, but it was not really favorable to the overall camp level. The recent withdrawal of Donatas Motiejunas as well as the injuries or non-entry of other top class talents hurt the overall level and the stands unpacked slowly throughout the day.

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