European Prospects

Nihad Dedovic plays already his 2nd season on the highest level after having spent several seasons in lower  Spanish divisons before coming to Roma to compete for the first time in the Euroleague. The 1m96 tall Bosnian is growing step by step and looks like a veteran despite being only 20 years old at the moment. After being present in the Adidas Eurocamp in 2010, Dedovic is certainly on the radar of the NBA as he offers a really interesting scorer skill-set combined with good height for the SG position.

Dedovic is the kind of player that never loses the faith in his own skills. Even when he is missing his shots or taking some bad decisions, he continue to play his basketball which means: scoring, shooting and scoring. The main option for the Visegrad native is his shot. The Bosnian has one of the quickest releases in Europe. However, he needs to have it because his shot is not really perfect in terms of release point as he has some kind of shoulder-chest shot with doing his release not at the perfect position above his head but somewhere a bit lower.

Next to his shooting game, Dedovic can also attack the basket mainly over his right hand. He shows some problems when he needs to go left and often prefers using even his stronger right hand in those situations. This limits his penetration game massively as he can not create like he probably wants to. He has some court-vision and he can come up with the nice pass but his limits on the left hand are something he really needs to improve in the future. This ball-handling issue is also a factor when he tries to beat his defender in 1-on-1 situations as he prefers always to go on the right side and uses sometimes even his only right hand for the cross-over move.

Out of his penetrations though, he can come up with the perfect kick-out pass or go hard to the lay-up. In the games I have seen, he barely ever stopped in mid-range to go for the jump shot but preferred to go until the rim. Dedovic is not afraid to score against taller players and can use his left hand to score the ball when he is close to the basket. He can change his speed on the drive nicely to put the defender in trouble or finish on the nice stutter move followed by the underhand lay-up against the big guy. With his size, he has a good advantage over most of the guards and you can see Dedovic also go down on the low post when he gets defended by a smaller player. This is however not a usual play for him; yesterday against Brose Baskets he did it once and got called for the offensive foul as he was forcing the move too much with his shoulder.

On the defensive end, Dedovic is a bit slow on the first step of the opponent. He struggles to stay in front of smaller guards that try to beat him on the dribble. His lateral speed is correct but he can improve it still by becoming more athletic in the future. On the other hand, he reads well what the offense wants and is not afraid to put his body on defense in order to take the charge on the help position. However, Dedovic had some trouble to follow his opponent when running through the screens and got stuck several times. His lack of physical presence at the moment hinders him to become a lock-down defensive type of player.

Dedovic is a real scorer, he has the fire in the eyes to score the basketball. While he struggles to be regular in the Euroleague (6.2ppg at 34% FGs), he averages 12.3ppg in the Italian with a fantastic 77.3% 2pt field goal percentage after the first 6 games. Roma gives him a lot of minutes and confidence which is of course great for a 1990 born player. He is among the most prolific scorers of his age group and he will certainly have a larger scoring role even next year, when he is automatically eligible for the NBA Draft.