VSPAN could barely contain himself on the Bench !!

Which is why he was drafted at the oh so lofty position of 24.



DD

 

Remind me where Spanoulis was drafted, thx.

Why do you make arguments that hurt your cause?

Why do you have to devalue Sam Cassell in order to boost your boytoy of the moment? (somebody break the news to Boki, Malick, Langhi, Griffin...)

 

Gotcha....V-Span was drafted in order to allow him to season in Europe...If you are going to argue that when they were drafted that Sam was more prepared I will agree.

But, we are talking about their rookie years.

KA CHOW !!

DD

 

DaDakota, your gonna hit 25K real fast with your boy Billy playing now.

Hell with all your man-love for Span and Steve if Novak gets PT this week you might hit it by New Years

 

LOL - Perhaps....if you add Vince Young in there I am toast !



DD

 

How much PT would have Cassell got his rookie year if JVG was the coach?

 

More than Chris Simms but less than Wayne Gretzky.

I answered your question, now can you please answer my question:

who is more "NBA-ready", somebody who was an all-ACC player as a senior and scored 18 ppg playing in the ACC at FSU during the last great era of college basketball, or somebody who played 1 year for Panthanaikos, and had an average season, and four years for lesser in the lower divisions, and who has had almost no exposure to the NBA game or american players.

 

My 2 cents on Spanoulis's European bio:

He started his pro career with Greek league's Maroussi (2001-2005), a decent team that ranked among top 4 in the Greek league that is often ranked among the best 4-5 domestic leagues in Europe along with Spanish, Italian and Russian. He improved his game each year to become the starting pg over there.

Then in 2005 he moved to Panathinaikos a euro powerhouse, he played in domestic league and euroleague as well. There he scored 15ppg and was honored with all euroleague 2nd team selection in his first year.

He played for Greek national teams from cadet, junior to men's level and has several accomplishments. More recently, he was Euro champion in 2005 and world chamion runner-up last summer in Japan in top level competition.

I have to say that he wasn't the centerpiece in any of those teams, just one of the best players in their rotation (euroball is more team oriented, few isolation plays) and a part of a strong perimeter lineup in Greek nt.

The ACC level back in those days was very high, Duke and UNC have huge bbal programmes, but the difference is that Spanoulis has been seasoned playing professionally against vets be it europeans or americans. Some ACC selection teams have also crossed Atlantic in the past and played with national teams or just european clubs and they usually lost the games because of inexperience.

Also Panathinaikos has been home to several well known players in the last 10 years such as (in chronological order):
Antonio Davis,
Dominique (Human Highlight Film) Wilkins,
Dino Radja, Byron Scott,
Dejan Bodiroga,
Zeljiko Rebraca,
Tony Delk so it's a good level of competition.

Here are his bball achievements copied from wikipedia:
* Won the bronze medal at the 2000 European Junior Championship
* Won the gold medal at the 2002 European Under-20 Championship
* Enducted to the 2005-06 All-Euroleague 2nd Team
* Played the 2005 Greek All Star Game
* Won the gold medal at the 2005 European Championship
* Won the 2005-06 double with Panathinaikos Athens
* Won the silver medal at the 2006 World Championship


Hope this gives another view of Vassilis' career.

 

So your telling me that if we could trade V-Span for a 21 year old Sam Cassel today YOU rather keep V-Span!

 

Wow 20 pages of posts from guys that have nothing more important to do than badmouth JVG. The thing you Never see from these guys is an exact goal that they think should be achieved by the Rockets and if achieved would cause them to cease their never ending whining. Even if the Rockets win 55 games they will simply say, "JVG sucks if he had played Novak and VSpan more the Rockets would have won 60." They never leave an identifying mark - so they can never be proven wrong. I am not a fan of JVG but he has done nothing to deserve this hatred. He pulled the Rockets back to respectability after Rudy T left the team in ashes. His second year he improved the regular season record and went 7 games with Dallas. Last year, it wouldn't have mattered if the team was coached by Red Auerbach and John Wooden, the team would have still been in the lottery. So this is the year, JVG has to improve from his second year showing. If the Rockets do not win at least 50 regular season games and advances to the second round of the playoffs, then the Rockets should look hard at replacing him. Any discussion of his firing now is nonsense, uttered only by the whiners, who are incapable of objectivity. Speaking of whiners, here is your chance DD to state now what number of victories this year would be sufficient to cause you to stfu about JVG? Would 55 wins shut your mouth?

 

My credibility?
Ha.
After just admitting that you "barely" knew anything about basketball in Europe, you decide to preach about the differences.
Way to hoist up your own petard.

And furthermore, does it really matter that players chosen for the U21 for the U.S. were top 25 instead of top 10 when the point is that even the top 50 U.S. guys are more talented collectively than any European team's top 5?
The reason they lost is inexperience.
Not because Lebron and Chris Paul didn't play. (BTW it's pretty funny that many of the guys you mentioned did play for the U.S. this year against the current Greek team which is pretty much the team that beat the "second stringers" in '95. How did they fare there?)
When a significantly superior talent pool from a country of 300 million is consistantly getting beat by countries of 15 million in a tournament, it isn't because "so and so" wasn't there.

Sorry, I misspoke.
I meant that I was a north east bball guy, which means I closely follow the big east. Marbury and GT got thrown in there because I followed his career at Lincoln High School (I remember being upset that he didn't come to St. Johns so that he could school AI at GTown)


I'll see if I can dig up any results from exhibition games played in Europe.
Every year a couple of big college programs come over and play a few games, usually getting roughed up by the powerhouse teams.

 

OOOOH...that is a tough one....I would have to go with Sam, but only because his career is already known.

Who knows in 5 or 10 years we might say V-Span had the better career.

DD

 

Uh, what is that going to prove regarding this specific debate? Nothing at all...period.

Here's the part of my post that you did not answer, and the part that is the point of my objection to the fabrications being made by individuals in this thread.

Let me define "NBA-ready": Prepared to make an immediate impact in the NBA and have a shorter transitional period.

Look. Sam Cassell was a senior playing at the HIGHEST levels of American basketball. He was a star at legendary Baltimore Dunbar high school. In the offseason he played in the Baltimore AAU summer leagues with future NBA'ers, He had bad grades so he went to Juco - where he starred on national powerhouse teams at San Jac (and played summer leagues with NBA players at Fonde, I believe; then he went to FSU, was a star at FSU during the golden era of the ACC and college basketball and was an all ACC player, n a league loaded w/future NBA Hall of Fame players. The bottom line is the following: In terms of finding somebody who is "NBA-ready" you simply cannot find a better resume than Sam Cassell's for all practical purposes.. Sure, you can split hairs and certainly say Grant Hill was "more" NBA ready, but really they are both variations on the same theme: guys who came up through the highest levels of the American amateur system - and importantly, completed their training, did not do early entry, and excelled at them, and (unsurprisingly) made immediate NBA impacts

You are telling me that Spanoulis, with his various European accomplishments (which are good, but not outstanding, such as that of a Jasikevicus), having never even set foot in the US before this year, who has lived and played in Greece his whole life under different rules, who has never played American style basketball in his life - is better prepared to come into the NBA, have an immediate impact, and have a shorter transitional period in American style basketball than Cassell?

The same Sam Cassell who had two NBA Championship rings (based in no small part on his clutch NBA Finals performances) by age 24?

Sorry, but while opinions can differ, I find this argument utterly unconvincing, for obvious reasons

 

So Greece (and others before them) are more experienced and NBA ready than NBA "Dream Team"ers? That is where your logic takes you.

Spanoulis is better than Chris Paul (we already established Diamantidis is better than Oden)...spread the word.

 

I think this thread has no steam now that VSPAN is in the rotation.

 

You're building an army of strawmen to refute parts of my post.
Sorry, not playing.

The discussion at hand (since it seems that you may be reading comprehension challenged) is which players (NCAA or slightly older FIBA vets) would yield on average a more productive rookie campaign.

Do you have anything of consequence to add to the discussion?

 

Sam, your whole argument is conveniently built on a foundation of hindsight.


Let's not forget that the following players had better resumes than Cassell and therefore taken with the 10 picks before him in the draft.

13 L.A. Clippers............Terry Dehere..........G................Seton Hall
14 Indiana ..................Scott Haskin .......F - C .........Oregon State
15 Atlanta .................Doug Edwards .........F ............Florida State
16 New Jersey .............Rex Walters ..........G ...............Kansas
17 Charlotte ...............Greg Graham ..........G ...............Indiana
18 Utah ....................Luther Wright ..........C .............Seton Hall
19 Boston ...................Acie Earl ..............C .................Iowa
20 Charlotte ................Scott Burrell ......G - F ...........Connecticut
21 Portland ...............James Robinson .......G ...............Alabama
22 Cleveland ...............Chris Mills ...........G - F .............Arizona
23 Seattle .................Ervin Johnson .........C .............New Orleans


24 Houston ................Sam Cassell ...........G .............Florida State

 

his 3pt is bad

 

Actually the discussion is WHOM is the more NBA ready to contribute, V-Span or the 21 year old Sam Cassell. The discussion of which players are most ready to contibute in their NBA rookie campiagn, those coming out of the NCAA or FIBA vets, seems to be obvious. Though most rookies do not generally perform well (FIBA or NCAA) 99% of rookies who have immediate success IN THE NBA are drafted from the NCAA while those drafted from the Euro leagues have had up to now, enormous difficulty making the transition in their first year.