European Prospects

After arriving in Italy and a first day at the La Ghirada Sportcomplex, here are my first thoughts about the camp so far.

• Rudy Mbemba is once again the highest jumping (38″ vertical) and the fastest guy (2.51 sec for the half court sprint) in the camp. But he is also once again showing that he still struggles to make the difference between precipitation and speed in game situation.
• Serge Ibaka is probably the best combination between size and athletic skills here in Treviso. If he adds now at least a bit of ball handling skills, he can be a very interesting player in the future.
• The Reebok All-Stars of today’s game against the French U20 team were: Rudy Mbemba, Ivan Paunic, Oleksandr Kolchenko, Serge Ibaka, Dusan Katnic, Henk Norel, Vladimir Dasic, Jaka Klobucar, Semen Shashkov and Viacheslav Kravtsov.
• The players that gave a good impression to me today were Vladimir Dasic (showing a nice mix between basketball skills, physical build and shooting touch), Oleksandr Kolchenko (nice jump shooter, especially from three point area with big upper body), Nikita Kurbanov (all around skills, great defense and good basketball IQ) and Alexey Shved (perfect high shooting mechanics, great work in rebound and control of the game).
• Thomas Heurtel showed with the French U20 why he was the MVP of the Trophée du Futur and how he made an astonishing 25pts, 15asts and 7rebs performance in the Finals. He came up with a very interesting showing today against the Reebok All-Stars.
• For me, it is the first time that I attend such a camp. It is really a good possibility to see a lot of different prospects. But still, the game situations are not comparable with real match-ups as you see that lots of players prefer to go for the nice plays instead of playing “real” basketball.