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).
