ACB Summer Roundtable Part Two: Rating Campazzo to Murcia

By: Sam Meyerkopf / @HoopLikeDrazen, Rob Scott / @robscott33, and Austin Green / @LosCrossovers

It was an interesting off-season in a changing ACB.  Teams have different budgets and there is a lot of youth coming in from all around Europe in the league.  To help decipher all of this we also brought in Austin Green from LosCrossovers.com, the source for ACB writing in English.  Austin lived in Madrid for the whole 2014-15 season covering the ACB and will be based in Sevilla for this season.

Part One of the series, looking at Barcelona’s strange summer, dropped yesterday. For today’s dish, we asked ourselves:

Murcia goes Neto to Campazzo: Upgrade, Neutral, or Downgrade?

Sam Meyerkopf: This is tough because Neto orchestrated the offense well and led Murcia to a surprisingly successful season.  The only blemish for Neto was his paltry 20.5% 3 point shooting.  On the other hand Campazzo was deep, deep on the bench on a Real team that won the Euroleague and ACB last year, so it’s hard to digest his season.  In the spot minutes he played he was fairly effective, always providing energy.  But Campazzo still needs to grow in asserting control of the offense and with his decisions.

Campazzo has a very compact body, good at charging through tight spaces with a big burst.  He plays fast and loves to attack and get into the lane.  Campazzo has a good balance of scoring and creating shots for others.  He’s very tough so even though he is small he has no fear when driving or finishing near the basket.  He’s a decent long-range shooter, it’s not his first or really even second option on offense but Campazzo is a capable three-point shooter.

On the flashiness scale, both are very high up and play with great creativity.  There will be no drop off on that front.  But on the overall playmaking front, Neto had such experience having the ball a lot in San Sebastian that he was very ready to lead Murcia while Campazzo will need time to learn all the different controls an ACB point guard needs to lead his team.  To start it will seem like a slight downgrade but as Campazzo gets comfortable this should become a very close to neutral comparison.

Rob Scott: Hit the reset button on all of your expectations for Campazzo, going back a year to when he inked with Madrid. We know he brings toughness as well as guile. We know he can unlock a defense with either off-beat creativity or a solidly well-timed pass. We just don’t know if he can do it on a regular basis as the main playmaker on an ACB club, because he didn’t get the minutes on Madrid’s super-team.

Neto is a known quantity, he had a great rapport with his fellow Brazilian Augusto Lima, he had grown into his role and he knew the league. Campazzo could be an upgrade, but right now I’m saying it’s a neutral move until we’ve seen how Young Fac handles the responsibility of leading a team.