By George O'Brien / Arizona

Suns rookie Leandro Barbosa has been adding to his international experience playing for the Brazilian national team at the Olympic regional qualifying tournament. His best game yet came against Emanuel Ginobili's Argentina team.

One of the reasons that 18 year old Leandro Barbosa was not taken until the 28th pick in this year's NBA draft was because not much was known about him other than his great athleticism. He played a small part with the Brazilina team that won last year's Pan American Games gold medal. This year he is having a bigger impact as he increases in minutes on a veteran Brazilian team.

Through Aug 25th his line score was as follows:

Against the USA: 7 points on 3 of 7 from the field in 11 min.
Against the Virgin Islands: 15 points on 4 of 6 from the field in 18 min.
Against Venezulela: 10 points on 3 of 4 from the field in 11 min.
Against the Dominican Republic: 22 points on 8 of 16 from the field in 21 min.
Against Argentina: 15 points on 6 of 13 from the field in 25 minutes.

Leandro made the most of his court time by scoring .8 points per minute played. To give some perspective, this would be 28 points if he played 35 minutes. Even more impressive, he did it while shooting 52% from the field.

Barbosa's performance against Argentina was especially impressive, even though Argentina won 76 to 74. It is one thing to run up a good line score against the Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic, but Argentina has Emanuel Ginobili and beat the US team last year during the Pan American Games. Leandro's 15 points was second highest on the Brazilian team and was 20% of the team's scoring. He shot 46% on a day when the rest of the Brazilian team shot only 35% from the field (in spite of 4 of 7 by the Nugget's Nene Hilario).

The Suns management team has to be smiling.