European Prospects

The Adidas Eurocamp Treviso will go in its 8th round this year and will host some of the finest and best talents in European Basketball aged between 18 and 22 years. The Eurocamp will again take place in the Ghirada Sports Complex and will draw the attention of all NBA Franchises as well as a large number of European Teams, Scouts, Agents and Journalists. With the event just a few days ahead, we will take a look at this year’s edition.

The main question is of course about which players will attend this year’s edition. As there is still no official Player List published at the moment where I am writing this article, the best resource is the on-going updated List of our friends at Eurohopes.com. They have put together all the names that have been mentioned throughout the web to come to Treviso and their list features at the moment 29 prospects of the probably about 45-50 to attend. From the automatically eligible players, the names quoted are Pietro Aradori, Daniel Clark, Oleksandr Kolchenko, Vladimir Dasic and Rolands Freimanis. My guess it that there will be some names added in this part even if some prospects like Paulao Prestes (injury) or Tim Ohlbrecht (in the USA) will not be there for different reasons.

One 88 born player that may be there is of course Alexey Shved from Russia who got kicked out of the Playoffs a few days ago with his team Dynamo Moscow. The Serbian talents like Nemanja Bjelica, Stefan Markovic, Boban Marjanovic, Marko Keselj or Miroslav Raduljica are still active in the Serbian League and will therefore miss this event. A player that may attend is Martynas Gecevicius from Lithuania as the Baltic Season is over already. Some additional players that may be present from the 1988 born category are Adrien Moerman, Rudy Jomby, Terrence Oglesby, Anton Ponomarev or Abdoulaye M’Baye.

Who are the players to watch?

In the absence of Jan Vesely, Kevin Seraphin and most of the Serbian top prospects, there are no really outstanding names left in this group except the lottery potential Donatas Motiejunas. The Lithuanian forward plays for the local Benetton Treviso team and will certainly be under big observation of all the present NBA Teams. He is confirmed as a player in the camp by his team but it has to be seen if he will compete through out the camp as the experience has shown that the main prospects often only do one day or a selection of workouts.

Another player that will be in the focus of most of the NBA Teams is Jeremy Tyler who spent a season with Maccabi Haifa in Israel. After the successful experience of Brandon Jennings in Rome last season, the NBA teams will probably take a closer look at this other young US-born player who went to Europe to gain experience. The results however are pretty mixed for Tyler as he did not even finish the the season with the Israeli team. The camp in Treviso is therefore an excellent opportunity for him to show if he has developed in the last months.

Even if they are not in the Draft this spring, there are quite some youngsters that will be a major target for the NBA teams in the next years. I speak here especially of Tomas Satoransky who participated already to the camp last summer and impressed quite a lot of people. With a season in the ACB behind him, the Czech guard has gained a lot of experience and he is a European top-star in the making. Being born in 1991, he will probably enter his name to the NBA Draft only next season but the camp gives the NBA observers an excellent possibility to get an update on him.

A player that we missed out a bit last year in Treviso but who will be present again this year is Miralem Halilovic. The Bosnian prospect will probably be one of the gems to discover for real this time as the Early-Entrant was only a last-second addition in 2009 and I was personally not aware of his young age back then.

Some players that are not on the Early-Entry list but can be considered as potential performers in Treviso are Linos Chrysikopoulos from Grece, Dairis Bertans from Latvia, Augusto Cesar Lima from Brazil or Nihad Djedovic from Bosnia. The last one came back from an injury only in May and had quite some impact in the Spanish ACB over the season despite being born in 1990 only. Chrysikopoulos is probably the youngest player in the camp being born in 1992 but his nice versatility and size make him on of the better prospects of his generation. Dairis Bertans is a scoring guard that played an important role in his Latvian team while Augusto Cesar Lima saw some minutes with Unicaja in the Euroleague already this season. He is born in 1991 and present quite a good length and rebounding touch.

What is the value of the French and Croatian U20 National Teams?

When you look at the roster of the Croatian NT as it is published on the official website of the camp, it looks like a really nice amount of talent being assembled. But it is reported that at least Duje Dukan, Sime Olivari, Luka Babic have been cut and Leon Radosevic, Tomislav Zubcic and Ivan Batur are still active in the Croatian Championship Finals. So the main player in the Croatian U20 National Team will be Mario Delas who played this season with Zalgiris Kaunas in the Euroleague. The PF did a great job for the Lithuanian team as he averaged 4.5ppg and 2.2rpg in the 6 games he played for the Greens. Other players to watch in the team are Toni Prostran or Domagoj Bubalo.

The French team is currently in a training camp until Friday so that it is not quite sure which players Coach Jean-Aymé Toupane will bring to Treviso. However, it would not be a surprise if NBA Draft Early-Entry Andrew Albicy, Trophée du Futur MVP Paul Lacombe, Nike Hoop Summit participant Mael Lebrun or the scorer Christophe Leonard will be in the group. In any case, the team looks particularly interesting and features also some potential NBA Draft candidates for the future.

How to follow the Camp?

Several Draft or Youth Basketball-related websites will cover the event from Treviso like the classics Draftexpress, nbadraft.net or Eurohopes. All of these guys have Twitter accounts where you can follow them in real-time about their coverage of the Adidas Eurocamp. Additional Twitter accounts to follow are for example @franfraschilla,  @Dschrempf or @pesic7. If you are in Treviso, lots of NBA executives, coaches and scouts like to eat at the terrace of the Pizzeria da Pino on the beautiful Piazza dei Signori. As apparently Larry Bird and Michael Jordan are reported to attend the camp this year, it may be worth a look to check out the inner city and to spot some of the most famous ancient glories of the NBA in the medieval city centre.

UPDATE 4-6-2010

In between, an early official list has been published by several news outlets. Several players mentioned in the article above are not part of it like Martynas Gecevicius or Donatas Motiejunas who has also decided to withdraw his name from the NBA Draft 2010. A player that has been added to the official participant list afterwards is the German guard Lucca Staiger from ALBA Berlin.