European Prospects

Back in the Salle Corot for the Finals day of the tournament and the most important games of the week.

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I arrived this morning in Douai, the city of the Giants for the 22nd edition of the Douai World Tournament. And here are short recaps of the games from this Saturday.

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The 22nd Douai World Tournament started yesterday evening but before the official opening, Team USA played an exhibition game against Adidas Nations Africa.

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Here are the latest rumors concerning the NBA Draft that will start tonight at 1h30 CET.

• After the period of Nicolas Batum‘s heart problems, the medical bulletin has not been released by his agents. The only teams that have it right now are the San Antonio Spurs (26th) and the Cleveland Cavaliers (19th).
• After the hype on Alexis Ajinca after his workouts and some Mocks having him as high as the lottery, his stock seems to plummet in the last hours. The NBA teams I spoke too don’t see him that high too. However, his agents (the same than Batum’s) see him higher than the player from Le Mans.
• Serge Ibaka won’t probably go in the first round as his agent reported to Draftexpress yesterday. It looks like Ibaka has a big offer from a Spanish powerhouse that virtually would make him unavailable if he gets drafted in the late first round. These rumors have however not been reported anywhere in Spain so far.
• From Croatia, I just got these two clips on their NBA Draft candidates: Ante Tomic and Damjan Rudez.
• Jonathan Givony interviewed Danilo Gallinari on the NBA Draft Media day.
• I don’t cover Australian Basketball but here you can see the Aussie prospects for this Draft.
• The rumors who get drafted where are of course the most interesting ones. As it was a clear thought that the Spurs will draft Nicolas Batum at 26th, ESPN reports that the Spurs want to trade their 26th pick. They probably know that Batum won’t be available anymore there.
• Another rumor is that the New Jersey Nets try to move up from 10 to 5 as they really like to draft Danilo Gallinari which seems to be a target for the Knicks at 6. BallinEurope reported already in May that Gallinari may end up in the top 5 according to an international NBA scout.

Tomorrow is the big day, the NBA Draft 2008 is going on in the Madison Square Garden, New York. Besides the 5 early entrants, there is a long list of 1986 born automatically eligible players that can be drafted. I took a short look at the most promising of these guys.

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Nicolas Batum, who got cleared today by US hospitals that he can play basketball and that his heart “problem” was probably the result of fatigue, is one of the players that has been covered extensively here. Read how he progressed over the last years here.

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Just a short post to introduce you to the interesting blog in French concerning the tournament in Douai. Europeanprospects.com will give you a lot more on this tournament in the upcoming days.

Find the Douai Blog here.

A few days before the NBA Draft, I will give you recaps of my former reports on the European Early Entrants so that you can see a bit their development. I will also add the current status.

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• The team of Real Madrid won the Spanish U20 Circuit this weekend in Inca. They beat Unicaja Malaga in the Finals easily with 74-52. Pablo Aguilar got named MVP of the tournament.
• Vladimir Jankovic, one of the best players during the Albert-Schweitzer Tournament signed a 4 year deal with Panionios Athens. He will however be loaned to BC Mega Aqua Monte in Serbia to get some playing time.
• This weekend is played the Euro-Essonne tournament for U18 teams in France. After two days of play, Latvia has won its two games and looks like the Final winner. Germany and Croatia play for the 2nd spot while France will most likely 4th out of 4 teams.
• Samuel Deguara, the 2m22 tall 1991 born player from Benetton Treviso,  is currently playing with the Maltese Senior National Team in the C-Division European Championship in Edinburgh. He came up with a double-double in Day two with 13pts and 15rebs.

A few days before the NBA Draft on Thursday, I will take a look at the latest editions of the Mock Draft and calculate the positions for the different Europeans that are still in the process.

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