A round up of some of the younger talent in Europe with a focus on players in Spain, whether they are potential future draft picks, players whose rights are held by an NBA team or some who just might be good enough to make the jump.
In the Spanish ACB, FC Barcelona’s Moussa Diagne had a great game against a struggling Basque team Gipuzkoa. The 6’11” center put up eight points as well as two blocks. All three of his field goals came from dunks, two of which came in a fantastic 90-second stretch where the 21-year-old Senegalese player had a powerful dunk followed a play later by a huge block and then a putback dunk. Although a lot of this came in garbage time, the young player clearly has a lot of potential and is quite athletic. Concerning the NBA, Diagne is an intriguing case as he withdrew from both the 2014 and 2015 drafts and played for Fuenlabrada, a Madrid-based team, before signing with Barcelona this summer. His current deal with Barcelona lasts for three years so it will be interesting to follow his progress during that time and whether he’ll see the full three years out or if we’ll be seeing him in New York come June.
A report surfaced earlier in the week citing that Dario Šarić is expecting to go to the Sixers at the end of the season. Ignoring speculation for now, Šarić had a rough week in the Euroleague, ending up on the wrong side of a couple of highlights in his team’s home loss to Zagreb. Nothing worth getting worked up over as despite this, he’s been putting up consistent numbers in all three of his Euroleague appearances this season, averaging 12 points a game, shooting 66 percent from two-point range and 50 percent beyond the arc, as well as averaging five rebounds and a steal per game.
A teammate of Šarić, Furkan Korkmaz is an 18-year-old from Turkey who has been seeing decent minutes for the Turkish side in the Euroleague and putting up reasonable numbers for someone his age. Scoring half of his six attempts from three-point range, the Turk is apparently the only pure SG expected to go in the lottery in Chad Ford’s early mock drafts.
For the 2016 NBA draft, @chadfordinsider projects just one SG as a lottery pick … and he doesn’t play college ball https://t.co/YkhEoB5sBS
— ESPN Insider (@ESPNInsider) October 30, 2015
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Staying in Istanbul, but looking at a different team, we find Fenerbahçe’s Bogdan Bogdanović, who was selected in the 2014 draft with the 27th pick by the Phoenix Suns. Since then, Bogdanović won the Euroleague Rising Star award for the second time in May 2015 and helped take his team to the Euroleague Final Four for the first time in Fenerbahçe’s history before losing to Real Madrid in the Semi Finals. Last week however, Bogdanović and Fenerbahçe extracted revenge on the Spanish side by beating Real Madrid 77-66 in a regular season clash. Bogdanović himself contributed 12 points (including two threes) as well as two steals. Hungry Phoenix Suns fans for whom the 2-2 start isn’t enough can check out the highlight video below for one of the steals, a deep three and a nice fade away from the Serbian.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lacNBpeGyt8]
Heading north to Moscow, Khimki’s Marko Todorović contributed 9 points and three blocks to his team’s blowout of Red Star Belgrade last week. However, a couple of weeks back in the first game of the Euroleague season, the Montenegrin put up 15 points, eight rebounds and two blocks. The center was drafted by the Trail Blazers back in 2013 but his rights were traded to the Rockets whose big men seem to be struggling with injuries. It’s good for them to know that the 23-year-old could be in the future regardless of how this season goes.
Marius Grigonis is a Lithuanian shooter playing in Manresa, Spain. He’s shot five out of seven from three in the four games thus far in the ACB this season and is averaging 9.5 points per game. His team is 2-2 in the ACB but he’s contributing solid numbers and the draft-eligible 21-year-old already has a solid international résumé.
A highlight for this week is Oriol Paulí‘s dunk on Ioannis Bourousis in the ACB on Sunday. Paulí is expected to be a prospect in the 2016 draft and although he hasn’t been putting up huge numbers in limited minutes, the Spaniard shows he has tons of potential in clips such as the one below.
In your face! El matazo del joven Paulí en las narices de Bourousis. https://t.co/qxXrE1e48D
— Movistar+ (@movistarplus) November 1, 2015
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