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Rob Scott is joined by George Rowland and Austin Green to talk about Istanbul’s unsung up-and-comers, Barcelona’s missing letters (‘M’ and ‘F’) whether domestic quotas are nonsense or not, the panpositionality of Luka Doncic and more.

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Rob Scott fell in love with basketball from a town in northern England watching Toni Kukoč on the Chicago Bulls, and saw Pau Gasol and Šarūnas Jasikevičius ball in a south London rec centre. After a diet of NBA and BBL hoops got stale he dived back into the continental game and now writes for ELA within spitting distance of the 2013 Final Four venue. You can follow him on Twitter @robscott33

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5 Responses

  1. TG Reply

    To add to the comments you’ve read about Furkan Korkmaz and Turkey’s golden generation; it’s obviously not their coaches’ fault but blaming it all on the players also seems unfair. Turkey’s golden generation looked golden mostly because the youth teams in Turkey are a little too success oriented, instead of player development. In Furkan Korkmaz’s case, during summer 2015 the guy played THREE national tournaments, one of them being the Eurobasket. Summer is the time when players get to work on themselves and this 17 year old gets only 4-5 days to himself all summer. At the same time, if I remember correctly, the wonderkid Doncic we all marvel at right now was off in USA doing special camps and individual work-outs and stuff instead of running from tournament to tournament. Another example, last year Furkan’s high school requested Efes to give Furkan some time off so that he could play for his school in a high school championship and literally sued Efes when their request was rejected. “Give this guy some time off Euroleage so that he can win us a high school championship” pretty much sums up the approach towards player development in Turkey I think. Furkan said or implied in a few interviews that he wanted to go to NBA as soon as possible because even if he doesn’t get any playing time right away, he thinks he would get more time and chance for individual development there. I think that messed up his head a little bit so loaning him to somewhere where he can re-focus seems to be a very logical idea by Efes.

    • Rob Scott Reply

      Hey TG, thanks so much for your thoughtful comment. I put it to our Twitter followers and pretty much everyone agreed. - https://twitter.com/savasbdl/status/809383593445298176

      Winning over player development is an issue throughout youth ball whether its coaches playing zone at U16 level, ‘importing’ talent or overworking the most talented kids. Certainly Furkan has enormous potential, and a summer off would probably do him some good. Maybe now he’s been drafted he’ll be more focused on individual workouts, I’d imagine the Sixers will be in his ear trying to make sure he looks after his own (and their) interests.

      • TG Reply

        Yeah I saw. Well, thank you for creating quality content that provokes thoughtful comments.

  2. Cos Reply

    Local players are the only ones that will sign a 3 or 4 year contract.
    It’s extremely risky to have 12 players on 1 or 2 year contracts.
    Especially for mid-tier teams that struggle to keep hold of a player on a contract year that has a good season, local players is the ONLY way to go.
    Look at Baskonia every season.
    Bamberg and Bayern.
    Even Maccabi

    All unable to capitalize on a good season.
    So what if you have a couple of bad seasons while you try break 7 German players into your rotation?
    Maybe the for the German teams that don’t have guaranteed contracts, this doesn’t make so much sense, but for Zalgiris? How else could they ever win it besides the way they won it in 1999?

    Obviously “local” is a relative word. You can sign a foreigner when he’s young or simply happen to build a rapport with a player to the extent that can count on him signing for less.
    But this is all you can do.

    Olympiacos’ success is reliant on Spanoulis and Printezis playing for as much as half of what they are worth at times. The problem then is that you can’t pay anyone else anything close to what they are making.

    Having a roster of 12 Americans is only an advantage if your competition has foreign player restrictions. A zero sum game. What if every league gets rid of the local player rules?

    The Euroleague is better than the D-League BECAUSE of the players that would rather have a good Euroleague career rather than a possibly failed attempt in the NBA. Almost exclusively “local” players.

    They are the only players worth investing in because they are the only ones that will sign long contracts.

    • Rob Scott Reply

      All good points. I don’t think we’d see a situation where a team has 12 Americans - for the reasons you just set out. We’re saying that teams in leagues with really tight import restrictions - like Spain - already find a way to have 4, 5 Americans / other (but usually US) on their squads, its just through BS passports. The fans don’t seem to mind. Top level Euro hoops will never be like the D-League because the talent is so much greater, there isn’t an unlimited pipeline of US players who can play at that level, those that exist are over here because other than a few headcases who can’t survive overseas, nobody is playing for $26K who could get $500K. The problem of rationing domestic talent amongst the richest teams in each country is an issue because so many top European players are in the NBA, that’s how Barca + RMB end up with most of the better remaining Spanish guys.

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