Its way too risky to draft a European with a top 3 pick

[beasted86]

Turiaf is from Martinique... it's a french province in the Carribbean.
Kirilenko is from Russia. When did Russia become part of Europe?
Deng is from Sudan, which is in Africa genius. It just has strong ties to England.

[D-Rose]

Turiaf is from Martinique... it's a french province in the Carribbean.
Kirilenko is from Russia. When did Russia become part of Europe?
Deng is from Sudan, which is in Africa genius. It just has strong ties to England.

Turiaf probably has a French passport.
Deng has an British passport
A huge chunk of Russia is part of Europe, basically west of the ural mountians. There's also the small piece next to Poland.

[Jinxed]

Turiaf, Kirilenko, & Deng are not european. You need a geopgraphy lesson..

Kirilenko is European. Part of Russia is in Europe, part of Russia is in Asia. AK grew up in St. Petersburg, which is in the European part.

http://www.aboutromania.com/WorldEuropeCountriesMap.gif

Also statistically speaking, which accounts for more than you spewing nonsense in order to form an opinion.. AK is one of the best defenders in the league. In fact according to Opponent PER (the PER of the man you guard, he is the best defender in the NBA. Check this out...

http://www.82games.com/0809/ROLRTG3.HTM

Fernandez and Hedo are two of the best defenders as well.

Rudy Fernandez - exposed in the dunk contest... not very athletic

Uhh..what? I'm pretty sure everyone agreed that Rudy's dunk was awesome, Pau just ****ed up by trying to throw the ball behind his back. Rudy has a higher vertical than Dwayne Wade and Dwight Howard and has one of the fastest lane agility drills ever in the history of the NBA draft combine. Meaning he is one of the quickest players in the league.

[beasted86]

Whatever you say...

[Al Thornton]

Pietrus ? Turiaf ? Gortat ? Kirilenko ? Sefolosha ? Deng ? Batum ?



Tony Parker ? Pietrus ? Sefolosha ? Rudy Fernandez ?

**** thread

[beasted86]

Hahah... now I've heard it all...

I don't need to look at stats to tell you Hedo & AK47 aren't close to the best defenders in the league. If you want to look at some numbers on a page & compile your opinion based off that... then go ahead. Next your going to tell me Haslem is a top 10 offensive player too... right?

Quick doesn't mean everything in terms of athleticism as I already said with Parker. I'm talking about stength, exploding to the basket, thunderous dunks.

Rudy does not even get up that high on dunks. His dunks are more impact (alley oop, or a timely dunk in the clutch) more than raw athleticism (going right at the chest of a Perkins type C, getting the dunk & the and/1). Parker & Rudy are finesse players.

[Jinxed]

Johan Petro was pretty athletic for a seven footer as well
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLoxd...eature=related

[Mikaiel]

Turiaf is from Martinique... it's a french province in the Carribbean.

1. Martinique is a part of France. The people there are French, they have the exact same political rights as the French who live in Europe. When you're there, you're in France. And Turiaf played ball in metropolitan France (the part in Europe) before he went to college in the US.

Kirilenko is from Russia. When did Russia become part of Europe?

Not all of Russia is in Europe, but Moscow (their capital) is in Europe. And if it's not in Europe, why did they win the European Championships in '07 with Kirilenko winning the MVP ?

Deng is from Sudan, which is in Africa genius. It just has strong ties to England.

But Deng is English. So technically, he's European.

[Jinxed]

Well you can keep pretending that AK47 is not a good defender so you can defend your not so well thought out argument, but I'll take objective statistics and the opinion of NBA coaches who year in and year out give him votes for defensive player of the year. And so will everyone else.

[Jinxed]

Quick doesn't mean everything in terms of athleticism as I already said with Parker. I'm talking about stength, exploding to the basket, thunderous dunks.

So basically your only criteria for athleticism is Strength? Quickness, speed, agility and the most important of all --coordination--don't matter.

Well then I guess this man should be the first pick in the NBA then..since he won last year's world strongest man contest. But wait..he's European.

[Jinxed]

Rudy does not even get up that high on dunks. His dunks are more impact (alley oop, or a timely dunk in the clutch) more than raw athleticism (going right at the chest of a Perkins type C, getting the dunk & the and/1). Parker & Rudy are finesse players.

Have you already forgotten?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47VLce11WDM

[Hammertime]

Stop feeding the troll, people. He's just trying to rile you up.

Nobody is stupid enough to claim that the current European basketball champions aren't European.

[Valliant13]

I thought that most teams would understand this from all the history of international players coming out of the draft, and what the full potential of these players are.

Rule: You don't use a top 3 pick on a european player

Here are just a couple of reasons why

- Poor defenders
I'm going to go as far as to say all euro players are poor defenders.

-Not athletic
I don't know if its genetics or what... but no euro player has ever had a muscular build, or legit athleticism where they were one of the fastest players, or highest jumpers.




IMHO the Top 4-10 picks are fine, but I just think its too risky for a top 3 pick.

Someone really needs to tell Kirilenko that he is unathletic, poor defender. Or Bierdrins. Or Batum.

You don't watch a lot of ball, do you?

[Valliant13]

So basically your only criteria for athleticism is Strength? Quickness, speed, agility and the most important of all --coordination--don't matter.

Well then I guess this man should be the first pick in the NBA then..since he won last year's world strongest man contest. But wait..he's European.

Mariusz is such a Juice monkey...but damn is he freakishly strong. He hulimates guys that have hundred pounds on him.

[Jinxed]

as far as I know..there have only been 3 Europeans taken amongst the first three picks in draft history

Andrea Bargnani---hasn't lived up to potential yet, but isn't bad at 15 pts a game at the age of 23.

Darko--FAIL.

Pau Gasol-3rd pick in 2001. Became the best player in Franchise history. Grizz were pretty happy with that one.

So we have one epic win. One fail, although still could start for some teams in Darko and one remains to be seen with Andrea...