Tuesday, September 13, 2011

FIBA Americas Musings on Argentina, Canada, More

• Also on The Painted Area: EuroBasket Quarterfinals Preview:
Spain-Slovenia, Lithuania-(FYR) Macedonia

What a fun weekend of basketball down in Mar del Plata, Argentina, with the FIBA Americas semifinals and final. On Saturday, Argentina survived Puerto Rico and Brazil outlasted Dominican Republic to claim the federation's two automatic bids to the 2012 London Olympics. On Sunday, Argentina held off Brazil to win the tournament before an passionate full house at home. Tourney MVP Luis Scola was magnificent, scoring 59 points on 24-35 FG in the final two games, and averaging 21.4 points on 56.5% shooting in 29.2 minutes per game overall in the tournament. Here are a few of my big-picture thoughts related to the tournament:
    Contents:
    1. Argentina: Looking Like the End of the Line
    2. Canada: FIBA Americas Sleeping Giant of the Future?
    3. Whither Splitter?
    4. Grande Sounded Great
    5. FIBA Americas Spitting Images
1. Argentina: Looking Like the End of the Line
Ever since Argentina's Golden Generation burst onto the international basketball scene with their shocking dissection of Team USA at the 2002 FIBA World Championships, they've been one of my favorite teams to watch at any level of basketball, with their often-gorgeous and always-cohesive combination of player movement and ball movement out of their flex sets on offense. (Jesse Blanchard from the Spurs blog 48 Minutes of Hell posted an eloquent appreciation of this era of Argentina basketball yesterday that's worth a read.)

The decade-long run looks like this:
    • 2002: Worlds Silver
    • 2004: Olympics Gold
    • 2006: Worlds 4th
    • 2008: Olympics Bronze
    • 2010: Worlds 5th
But now, it looks like it's all coming to an end, as Argentina really looked old despite winning the FIBA Americas tournament. All things considered, I would be surprised if Argentina is in serious medal contention at the 2012 Olympics.

Granted, Argentina came into this FIBA Americas tournament with the kind of expectations usually faced by a Team USA. Playing at home and with essentially their full complement of stars, they were largely expected to run through the tourney with little challenge.

Yet, the Argentines were surprisingly knocked off by Brazil in the group stage, barely survived an upset bid by Puerto Rico in the semifinals (I'm still shocked that P.R. did not put the ball in the hands of J.J. Barea down two points and needing to go the length of the floor with 6.6 seconds left), and then had to dig down deep for a fourth-quarter comeback over Brazil in the championship game.

A changing of the guard in South American basketball now seems not only inevitable but imminent, as Brazil has plenty of room to get better - Nene, Andy Varejao and Leandro Barbosa could all be added to the squad, and there are several intriguing young prospects in the pipeline.

Meanwhile, Argentina desperately needs reinforcements, but none are on the way. Their team had 10 players over 30, no player under 27, and little depth forced those top greybeards into heavy minutes.

The whole story of Argentina basketball is really amazing to me: seemingly out of nowhere, they developed a generation with an excellent depth of quality NBA players - Ginobili, Scola, Nocioni, Oberto, Delfino - and now, there appears to be very little talent behind them. Argentina did finish in 4th at the recent FIBA Under-19 World Championships, but without any elite-level individual talents.

The players remain confident. Carlos Delfino said this about the Olympics after the win over Brazil: "We are getting old but we've got a big heart and big guts. God willing, we will play a great tournament and get a new Gold."

I mean, I was certainly pulling for the Golden Generation this weekend, and I'm sure I'll be doing the same next summer at the London Olympics, but Argentina desperately needs an injection of a couple 25-year-old talents which is not coming. All things come to an end.

Still, we celebrate the Golden Generation for one more golden performance, and leave the last word to Manu:
    "We are united, a group of friends, we are all really happy about Luis Scola earning the MVP prize after such a tough recovery he had or Nocioni playing with his ankle absolutely injured and these are only a couple of examples we can name. Let the legend continue."
2. Canada: FIBA Americas Sleeping Giant of the Future?
Team Canada flamed out of the FIBA Americas tournament, not even able to get into the top five and claim one of the spots for the pre-Olympic qualifying tournament, which cost coach Leo Rautins his job. (Don't blame it on Steve Nash, by the way.)

While Brazil certainly seems well-positioned for FIBA success in the near future, and the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico should be competitive, it's worth noting that Canada could become a FIBA power later in the 2010s, if they can harness all of the talent coming down the road.

The 2011 NBA draft featured Canadians PF Tristan Thompson in the lottery and PG Cory Joseph later in the first round.

PG Myck Kabongo should follow the Canada-to-Texas pipeline into an upcoming first-round, and big men Khem Birch (Pitt), Dwight Powell (Stanford) and Kris Joseph (Syracuse) could be first-round picks, too.

Further down the road, PF Anthony Bennett is rated as the no. 7 player in the 2012 high-school class, and SF Andrew Wiggins may be the best prospect of all, currently ranked as the no. 1 player in the class of 2014, and yes, that's ahead of any American high-schooler.

There should be plenty of talent for Canada to compete for medals not only at the FIBA Americas level, but at the World Championships and Olympics, as well. Frankly, by the late 2010s, Canada may have more basketball talent than any country outside the U.S.

The key issue, however, is getting all these players together to actually play for Team Canada. As Lawrence Dushenski noted to me on Twitter: "Most of these kids spend more time in the States than in Canada - hard to convince them to come play".

Canadian columnist Michael Grange wrote a full piece on the topic as well, leading with the following comment: "Until our players truly want to play for Canada, the basketball program will continue to suffer."

3. Whither Splitter?
In Monday's edition of 5-on-5, three of the five panelists suggested that Tiago Splitter would be a player who would make a great leap in 2012.

It should be noted that Splitter really did not look good for significant stretches of the FIBA Americas tournament. He was hampered by foul trouble, yes, but the Brazilian offense often seemed to function better with reserve big Rafael Hettsheimer in the game instead of Splitter.

In Brazil's group-stage win over Argentina, Hettsheimer was the star, with 19 points and 8 rebounds on 9-11 FG in 22 minutes, while Splitter had just 1 point on 0-6 FG in 18 minutes.

In the semi vs. the Dominican Republic, Splitter scored just 3 points on 1-5 FG in just 11 minutes (Hettsheimer had 14 points on 6-10 FG in 20 minutes), and often seem overpowered by Dominican revelation Jack Michael Martinez.

In the final, Splitter played better, with 12 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists on 5-10 FG in 22 minutes after once again battling foul trouble.

All told, Splitter may have been miscast as a primary scoring option. He really struggled to convert offensively, and often had his shot blocked. Overall, he averaged 8.7 ppg on 49% FG and an abysmal 43% FT mark in 21 minutes per game.

Yet, as Jay Aych has noted in his analyses, Splitter still contributed strong efforts as a rebounder (6.6 per game), defender, and passer (2.2 assists per game).

Still, after Splitter's exceptional 2009-10 season as the MVP of the Spanish ACB, we were expecting him to follow in the footsteps of former ACB MVPs like Luis Scola and Marc Gasol, and make a bigger impact on the NBA.

Back in San Antonio, Splitter will probably be placed in a role which suits his strengths and weaknesses better, but considering he's a key player in the team's future, it has give Spurs fans some pause that the Brazilian national team often seemed to function better in key games with Splitter on the bench.

4. Grande Sounded Great
Sean Grande and Fran Fraschilla called the FIBA Americas games on ESPN2 in the U.S. Certainly, we're appreciative of Fraschilla for all the support he's shown The Painted Area, and despite our bias, we genuinely think he does a great job analyzing FIBA games.

But we just wanted to take a second to give a shout-out to Grande, who's been the Celtics' radio broadcaster for several years, for outstanding work. Grande has everything one would want in a play-by-play man: good voice, eloquence with language, impeccably well-prepared with background knowledge, evident love of the game.

Even though these FIBA Americas games were far off the radar of the American sports landscape on the opening weekend of the NFL, Grande still treated them as significant events, understanding that the dozens of us lunatics who DVR'd the semis in the middle of the night and watched the final ahead of the Cowboys-Jets game did, too. I appreciated that.

In my mind, Grande should be a major national TV broadcaster for the NBA somewhere, without question.

5. FIBA Americas Spitting Images
A little FIBA frivolity before we go. Every time there was a cutaway to the Argentina bench, we couldn't get over the sense that Argentina coach Julio Lamas bore a striking resemblance to Keith Olbermann:

Lamas doesn't draw up plays during time outs, he issues SPECIAL COMMENTS.

Finally, we were excited that scrappy Argentina big man Guillermo Kammerichs brought back his moustache styling for the tournament final, as it allows us to re-run our favorite obscure FIBA lookalike from a few years ago, which goes something like this:



Borat + Brent Barry

=

Guillermo Kammerichs (Argentina)

Thank you. We'll be here all week.

• Also on The Painted Area: EuroBasket Quarterfinals Preview:
Spain-Slovenia, Lithuania-(FYR) Macedonia

21 Comments:

At 1:54 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good to see props for the nice crop of young Canucks in the pipeline. I think there are few others that will become solid pro's beyond the one's you mentioned...however you mentioned the best of them.

I truly think they will show up to play for Canada too. They have all repped Canada at the FIBA Americas and FIBA Worlds at the junior levels. They all rep Canada (in a way) playing for the CIA Bounce AAU team. They all know each other well and have played with each other growing up. I think you convince one or two of them, then they will all come play for the Senior Nat team.

A future 2016 Canadian Olympic Team Roster?
PG Myck Kabongo / Corey Joseph
SG Corey Joseph / Nick Stauskus / Xavier Rathan-Mayes
SF Andrew Wiggins / Anthony Bennett
PF Tristan Thompson / Dwight Powell / Kyle Wiltjer
C Khem Birch / Rob Sacre / Sim Bhullar


One can dream of better days!!!

 
At 1:58 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I missed putting Kris Joseph in there as well...

 
At 9:13 AM, Blogger Filipe Furtado said...

About Splitter I do think is worth to point out that he missed 2/3 of training camp injured and was according to himself just 70% healthy. That said Brazil offense certainly functioned better with Hettsheimer (even when one takes into account that Splitter was second in assistes and Hettsheimer second in TOs).

 
At 5:02 AM, Blogger 1 said...

To: M. Haubs

Hi There

My name is Zvi Adller and i am the editor in chief at www.who-is-thegreatest.com , a new user-content "hall of fame 2.0" project, online since June 2011.

We are looking to collaborate with sports sites, writers and bloggers in terms of content etc. if you are interested, let me know.

Your feedback will be much appreciated. Really.

You can find an example to the end for such Collaboration here - http://www.who-is-thegreatest.com/content/grand-slam-magic

Thanks

 
At 12:26 AM, Anonymous best sex shop said...

I found a great deal of useful material here!

 
At 4:38 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

They must have been forced to face several uncomfortable issues as far as the use of
their i - Phone is concerned. 3 inches screen, there is 285 pixel in one inch,
it is also called ppi. It's just a minor annoyance, because the tablet can fit in one hand, and therefore always stay directed to the user.

Here is my weblog - galaxy tab

 
At 8:47 PM, Blogger Unknown said...


pengobatan kanker serviks dengan herbal
pengobatan kanker serviks secara herbal
pencegahan kanker serviks secara herbal
herbal atasi kanker serviks
pengobatan kanker servik dengan herbal
obat kanker serviks akut
obat kanker rahim yang sudah parah
kanker serviks herbal
kanker rahim herbal
obat kanker serviks herbal
pengobatan kanker serviks herbal
herbal kanker serviks
pengobatan kanker serviks dengan herbal
pengobatan kanker serviks secara herbal
pencegahan kanker serviks secara herbal
kanker rahim herbal
obat kanker serviks herbal
pengobatan kanker serviks herbal

 
At 10:33 PM, Blogger hindu samrat said...

This is a very interesting website.Bollywood movie reviews,Hollywood movie reviews,kannada movie reviews, telugu movie reviews. I used to visit on it everyday,tamil movie reviews,Malayalam movie reviews,south indian movie reviews. this website provides me very useful information,movies public reviews,responses,critics reviews and ratings,star ratings, storyline storyplot. you did a very good job, keep it up.movies 1st first day collection status,movies gross collection,weekend collection,box office collection

 
At 8:56 PM, Blogger 柯云 said...

2015-12-23keyun
ray bans
ugg boots clearance
adidas originals store
north face jackets
longchamp handbags
chanel handbags
nike air max
michael kors outlet
ugg boots
uggs outlet
toms
nike roshe run mens
replica rolex watches
true religion jeans outlet
pandora charms
michael kors outlet
canada goose jackets
louis vuitton bags
canada goose outlet
abercrombie
louis vuitton
nike running shoes for men
abercrombie & fitch
ralph lauren
michael kors outlet
jordan concords
nike air max uk
christian louboutin shoes
coach outlet
ray ban sunglasses outlet
coach outlet
ralph lauren outlet
ralph lauren sale
louis vuitton handbags
timberlands
ugg boots
coach factory outlet online
cheap air jordans
coach outlet store online
coach outlet store online

 
At 6:07 AM, Blogger Karan Arora said...

Thanks for providing such a great info, you can see Easter Eve Quotes plz like and share this post. Thanks Regards

 
At 10:27 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Very nice post, i certainly love this website, keep on it
Visual-paradigm.com
Inmethod.com
Qubeshub.org

 
At 5:42 AM, Blogger Anonymous said...

Hey guys this is awesome posts Fathers Day 2016 Status and Fathers Day Status 2016 and Happy Fathers Day Status plz more and more shares to social networking sites

 
At 10:37 AM, Blogger Karan Arora said...

Indepedence Day Slogans
Indepedence Day Slogans In Hindi
Indepedence Day Slogans In English
Independence Day Speech
Short Speech On Independence Day
Independence Day Speech In English
Independence Day Parade
70th Independence Day Parade
Happy Independence Day Parade
Independence Day SMS 140
Independence Day SMS In Hindi
15th August Independence Day SMS
Independence Day Images
70th Independence Day Images
15th August Independence Day Images
Independence Day Flag Images
Independence Day Flag Pictures
Independence Day Flag Wallpapers
Independence Day Status
Independence Day Facebook Status
Independence Day Whatsapp Status
Independence Day Thoughts
Happy Independence Day Thoughts
Happy Independence Day Parade

 
At 1:42 PM, Blogger Happy Friendship Day 2016 said...

best friend messages
friendship day messages
friendship day messages in hindi
status of friendship day
happy friendship day photos
friendship day pics
friendship day photos
messages for friends
happy friendship day messages
friendship day sms in hindi

 
At 11:32 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

happy chinese new year 2017 wishes quotes in english

 
At 12:26 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

ITI 1st round Allotment list 2017
ITI Admission 2017 Next Allotment Round Shedule
ITI Final Merit List 2017
ITI DTP Trade 2nd Sem Result 2017
ITI DTP Trade 4th Sem Result 2017
ITI Result 2017

 
At 1:23 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

birkenstock sandals
michael kors outlet
moncler outlet
nike outlet
cheap nfl jerseys
adidas store
moncler jacka
ugg boots
ugg outlet
the north face canada
201711.9wengdongdong

 
At 5:18 AM, Anonymous Agen Judi Online Terpercaya said...

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."

 
At 8:34 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

www0705air jordan 4
clippers jerseys
coach outlet
canada goose outlet
kate spade outlet
kate spade outlet
christian louboutin outlet
canada goose jackets
y3 shoes
kings jerseys


 
At 8:32 PM, Blogger 5689 said...

zzzzz2018.9.12
nike shoes
red bottom shoes
off white shoes
moncler jackets
nike tn
pandora charms
coach outlet
salomon shoes
ralph lauren polo
golden goose

 
At 1:24 AM, Blogger yanmaneee said...

curry 6 shoes
kobe 9
yeezy outlet
balenciaga shoes
steph curry shoes
golden goose outlet
off white jordan 1
supreme shirt
air jordan
giannis shoes

 

Post a Comment

<< Home