Updated: June 18, 2006
Five things I learned in Italy this year
TREVISO, Italy -- The fourth annual Reebok Eurocamp is over, and the camp remains the gold standard of predraft camps.
In almost every way, it beats what the NBA presents in Orlando.
Run by Minnesota Timberwolves international scout Pete Philo, the event is well organized, gives NBA front offices the opportunity to evaluate underscouted players in multiple settings and provides the media with exceptional access to both players and NBA personnel.
One head-scratcher is that not all the top NBA executives attend. While virtually every team in the league is represented here in one way or the other, this event should be a must for NBA GMs. In many cases, they haven't seen the players before. When an unknown prospect like Joel Freeland comes along, some GMs have little basis on which to figure out whether to pull the trigger.
Here are five things I learned from my trip to Treviso this year.
1. Andrea Bargnani is for real.
One of the great bonuses this year was the fact that the camp was being held near where Bargnani was practicing in preparation for the Italian League finals.
ESPN Insider was the only media source with access to him, and several teams, including the Toronto Raptors, Los Angeles Clippers, Atlanta Hawks and Minnesota Timberwolves, evaluated him in meaningful settings. We ended up seeing him in two practices and one Italian Finals game.
And as it happens, just days before the draft Bargnani is the only top prospect NBA teams and journalists can still watch in organized competition.
What I saw gave me every reason to believe that Bargnani is a top-five prospect in the draft and has a legitimate claim on the No. 1 pick. He's more experienced than Tyrus Thomas, bigger and more athletic than Adam Morrison, more versatile than LaMarcus Aldridge and hungrier than Rudy Gay.
He probably can't trump Brandon Roy in any category other than size, but you could say the same things about everyone else in the draft, too.
I continue to believe if the Raptors keep their pick (that's still a big if), they'll draft Bargnani and won't regret it for a minute.
2. There are still secrets overseas.
England's Joel Freeland reminded us that there are still players who are underscouted and can surprise you -- even three weeks before the draft. His story is amazing. Three years ago he was bagging groceries in England, and he had never picked up a basketball before. Ever.
His first game he describes this way: "I took my first shot and it went over the backboard. I played football [soccer] all my life. I'm used to using my feet, not my hands."
For a year he continued to figure out how to play the game. At 18, he started playing competitive, organized ball in England. He went to Gran Canaria in Spain this season for his first year of "professional" ball -- he was in the Spanish fourth division and wasn't paid a penny for his services. He averaged 14.8 points and 7.8 rebounds in 26 minutes per game this season.
Now he's looking at being a second-round draft pick in this year's draft. Pretty amazing for a kid who says he'd never seen an NBA game before this year.
Freeland sounds like the type of kid who should be a bust. But it was his play on the floor, not in drills or workouts, that was impressive. He has great instincts, plays hard, has NBA size and athleticism and wants to get better.
The Reebok camp is as much about teaching prospects how to play as it is about evaluating talent, and Freeland improved in the span of four days. Every coach around him said he was a sponge who could hear something once or twice and incorporate it into his game.
He is young and needs a couple of years in Europe to get playing experience before he comes to the NBA. However, he's likely to stay in the draft because he already has a promise -- the Clippers, Timberwolves and Blazers are the suspects -- to be drafted in the early second round.
If I were drafting for a team late in the first, I'd have to seriously consider him. With this learning curve, he could be something special in a few years.
3. It pays to play.
This year the camp suffered from its own past success. Agents are now beginning to withhold their players from the camp as the profile of the camp continues to grow.
Spain's Sergio Rodriguez, Senegal's Mouhamed Saer Sene, the Ukraine's Olexisy Pecherov and Serbia's Nemanja Alexsandrov all pulled out of the camp, afraid they might hurt their stock.
Two kids with first-round aspirations, Brazil's Marcus Vinicius "Marquinhos" Vieria de Souza and Israel's Yotam Halperin, did show up, and both played well.
Of the two, Halperin had the best camp. He proved to be a legit 6-foot-5 and more athletic than we thought, showing excellent decision-making skills at point guard. Scouts wanted to see whether Halperin could play some point in the pros, and the answer, based on what we saw here, is yes.
Scouts and NBA executives also got the chance to be around Halperin, and all came away very impressed with him as a person. He's smart, considerate, determined and humble. Israel couldn't ask for a better guy to represent their country in the NBA.
Look for him to go anywhere from the late first round to early second. He has too much talent to slip much further.
Marquinhos' performance was more up and down. He really struggled with his shooting and looked a little rusty playing 5-on-5 basketball (his team went bankrupt in January and he's been working out in the U.S. in preparation for the draft).
He did show a nice handle and the ability to get to the basket and proved that he could be a nightmare on the defensive end in the NBA, with his combination of length, strength and agility.
But the most important thing scouts saw from Marquinhos was in a blowout loss to the Croatian national team. The Reebok All-Stars had no legs. They'd been in drills all morning and scrimmages every afternoon, and by Day 3 everyone was dead tired. The Croatian team got off to a huge lead and led the entire game by 20 or more points.
One by one, the Reebok All-Stars shut down. Injuries and fatigue caught up with everyone but Marquinhos. He was out there playing his heart out to the last second. His performance wasn't pretty, but his grit and toughness were inspiring and answered lots of questions about his heart and what kind of player he'd be in the NBA.
I'm not sure where he'll get drafted. The Hornets, Wizards and Mavs all like him and could take him in the first round. But I really think he is a two-to-three-year project, which makes him a much more likely early second-round pick.
4. There could be another Mike D'Antoni in Europe.
Players weren't the only guys being scouted in Italy. Benetton head coach David Blatt and CSKA head coach Ettore Messina were here, and they are considered the front-runners to be the next big Euro coach to head to the NBA.
With the success of former Benetton coach Mike D'Antoni and the Phoenix Suns, NBA owners and GMs are looking for head coaches who can duplicate the style of play, chemistry and success that D'Antoni has produced in Phoenix. Much of the coaching talent in the NBA is stuck in the old paradigm. If a team wants to play out of the box like the Suns, they may have to look out of the box.
Of the two, Blatt, has the best shot of doing it. Like, D'Antoni, he's American and understands the pro game and American players who play it. He too has a wonderful rapport with players and finds ways to maximize their strengths and hide their deficiencies. While so many coaches dwell on what their players can't do, Blatt has a great way of finding out and exploiting what they can do.
Like D'Antoni, he has had major success in Europe, another sign he's got what it takes. But just as important, he has a playing formula NBA players and fans want to see.
"Players want to play in the open court," Blatt said. "They want lots of opportunites to face the basket and be in motion. They want to basketball to be fun. That's the formula. It's worked great over here and as you can see in Phoenix, it can work great in the U.S. too with the right players and coach."
The key is finding a coach who trusts his players and system and can let go a little bit and just let his players play. Blatt has that rep here and it wouldn't surprise me if he were to get a job in the NBA within the next two years. It might be as a head assistant, but at some point I think you'll see Blatt as an NBA head coach.
Messina is a tougher read. He has more experience and more success -- he just won the Euroleague title for CSKA this year. He is a master teacher. He did a clinic at the Reebok Camp on passing that had everyone, NBA execs and coaches included, scribbling down notes. He has a way of simplifying the game for players that is remarkable.
However, he also is very strict, insists on a lot of control and is very hard on players who don't conform to his way. He's defense-oriented and conservative on offense. In other words, he's no D'Antoni. Nevertheless, he's one of the best basketball minds in the business.
"I can see both guys in our league real soon," one NBA executive said. "I think it will be a smooth transition for Blatt. If NBA guys were really doing their homework, he'd probably already be in the U.S. Messina will have more of an adjustment, but he's a hell of a coach.
"It's just going to take a total commitment to him the way [Bulls GM John] Paxson gave to [Bulls head coach Scott] Skiles. With him you have to get the right players and then stick to the game plan. If you do that, he could have a lot of success in the NBA."
5. Here's comes Gherardini.
It's no longer a secret that Benetton GM Maruizio Gherardini is about to accept a position as the assistant GM of the Toronto Raptors as soon as Benetton's season is over. The Raptors' gain is Italy's loss.
Gherardini has been a trailblazer in helping internationalize the NBA game. He has provided a safe harbor overseas for NBA executives and scouts for years. He has helped direct them to talent both in Italy and around the world and, at times, even helped facilitate access.
As former Nuggets GM Kiki Vandeweghe once said to me, "All NBA roads to Europe go through Gherardini."
He ran Benetton's team like a NBA club and has had unprecedented success in Europe. He was and continues to be Europe's ambassador to the game overseas.
He is an excellent addition in Toronto and will use his combination of intelligence, keen talent evaluation and diplomacy to make the Raptors a better club and GM Bryan Colangelo a better leader.
Five things I learned in Italy this year
TREVISO, Italy -- The fourth annual Reebok Eurocamp is over, and the camp remains the gold standard of predraft camps.
In almost every way, it beats what the NBA presents in Orlando.
Run by Minnesota Timberwolves international scout Pete Philo, the event is well organized, gives NBA front offices the opportunity to evaluate underscouted players in multiple settings and provides the media with exceptional access to both players and NBA personnel.
One head-scratcher is that not all the top NBA executives attend. While virtually every team in the league is represented here in one way or the other, this event should be a must for NBA GMs. In many cases, they haven't seen the players before. When an unknown prospect like Joel Freeland comes along, some GMs have little basis on which to figure out whether to pull the trigger.
Here are five things I learned from my trip to Treviso this year.
1. Andrea Bargnani is for real.
One of the great bonuses this year was the fact that the camp was being held near where Bargnani was practicing in preparation for the Italian League finals.
ESPN Insider was the only media source with access to him, and several teams, including the Toronto Raptors, Los Angeles Clippers, Atlanta Hawks and Minnesota Timberwolves, evaluated him in meaningful settings. We ended up seeing him in two practices and one Italian Finals game.
And as it happens, just days before the draft Bargnani is the only top prospect NBA teams and journalists can still watch in organized competition.
What I saw gave me every reason to believe that Bargnani is a top-five prospect in the draft and has a legitimate claim on the No. 1 pick. He's more experienced than Tyrus Thomas, bigger and more athletic than Adam Morrison, more versatile than LaMarcus Aldridge and hungrier than Rudy Gay.
He probably can't trump Brandon Roy in any category other than size, but you could say the same things about everyone else in the draft, too.
I continue to believe if the Raptors keep their pick (that's still a big if), they'll draft Bargnani and won't regret it for a minute.
2. There are still secrets overseas.
England's Joel Freeland reminded us that there are still players who are underscouted and can surprise you -- even three weeks before the draft. His story is amazing. Three years ago he was bagging groceries in England, and he had never picked up a basketball before. Ever.
His first game he describes this way: "I took my first shot and it went over the backboard. I played football [soccer] all my life. I'm used to using my feet, not my hands."
For a year he continued to figure out how to play the game. At 18, he started playing competitive, organized ball in England. He went to Gran Canaria in Spain this season for his first year of "professional" ball -- he was in the Spanish fourth division and wasn't paid a penny for his services. He averaged 14.8 points and 7.8 rebounds in 26 minutes per game this season.
Now he's looking at being a second-round draft pick in this year's draft. Pretty amazing for a kid who says he'd never seen an NBA game before this year.
Freeland sounds like the type of kid who should be a bust. But it was his play on the floor, not in drills or workouts, that was impressive. He has great instincts, plays hard, has NBA size and athleticism and wants to get better.
The Reebok camp is as much about teaching prospects how to play as it is about evaluating talent, and Freeland improved in the span of four days. Every coach around him said he was a sponge who could hear something once or twice and incorporate it into his game.
He is young and needs a couple of years in Europe to get playing experience before he comes to the NBA. However, he's likely to stay in the draft because he already has a promise -- the Clippers, Timberwolves and Blazers are the suspects -- to be drafted in the early second round.
If I were drafting for a team late in the first, I'd have to seriously consider him. With this learning curve, he could be something special in a few years.
3. It pays to play.
This year the camp suffered from its own past success. Agents are now beginning to withhold their players from the camp as the profile of the camp continues to grow.
Spain's Sergio Rodriguez, Senegal's Mouhamed Saer Sene, the Ukraine's Olexisy Pecherov and Serbia's Nemanja Alexsandrov all pulled out of the camp, afraid they might hurt their stock.
Two kids with first-round aspirations, Brazil's Marcus Vinicius "Marquinhos" Vieria de Souza and Israel's Yotam Halperin, did show up, and both played well.
Of the two, Halperin had the best camp. He proved to be a legit 6-foot-5 and more athletic than we thought, showing excellent decision-making skills at point guard. Scouts wanted to see whether Halperin could play some point in the pros, and the answer, based on what we saw here, is yes.
Scouts and NBA executives also got the chance to be around Halperin, and all came away very impressed with him as a person. He's smart, considerate, determined and humble. Israel couldn't ask for a better guy to represent their country in the NBA.
Look for him to go anywhere from the late first round to early second. He has too much talent to slip much further.
Marquinhos' performance was more up and down. He really struggled with his shooting and looked a little rusty playing 5-on-5 basketball (his team went bankrupt in January and he's been working out in the U.S. in preparation for the draft).
He did show a nice handle and the ability to get to the basket and proved that he could be a nightmare on the defensive end in the NBA, with his combination of length, strength and agility.
But the most important thing scouts saw from Marquinhos was in a blowout loss to the Croatian national team. The Reebok All-Stars had no legs. They'd been in drills all morning and scrimmages every afternoon, and by Day 3 everyone was dead tired. The Croatian team got off to a huge lead and led the entire game by 20 or more points.
One by one, the Reebok All-Stars shut down. Injuries and fatigue caught up with everyone but Marquinhos. He was out there playing his heart out to the last second. His performance wasn't pretty, but his grit and toughness were inspiring and answered lots of questions about his heart and what kind of player he'd be in the NBA.
I'm not sure where he'll get drafted. The Hornets, Wizards and Mavs all like him and could take him in the first round. But I really think he is a two-to-three-year project, which makes him a much more likely early second-round pick.
4. There could be another Mike D'Antoni in Europe.
Players weren't the only guys being scouted in Italy. Benetton head coach David Blatt and CSKA head coach Ettore Messina were here, and they are considered the front-runners to be the next big Euro coach to head to the NBA.
With the success of former Benetton coach Mike D'Antoni and the Phoenix Suns, NBA owners and GMs are looking for head coaches who can duplicate the style of play, chemistry and success that D'Antoni has produced in Phoenix. Much of the coaching talent in the NBA is stuck in the old paradigm. If a team wants to play out of the box like the Suns, they may have to look out of the box.
Of the two, Blatt, has the best shot of doing it. Like, D'Antoni, he's American and understands the pro game and American players who play it. He too has a wonderful rapport with players and finds ways to maximize their strengths and hide their deficiencies. While so many coaches dwell on what their players can't do, Blatt has a great way of finding out and exploiting what they can do.
Like D'Antoni, he has had major success in Europe, another sign he's got what it takes. But just as important, he has a playing formula NBA players and fans want to see.
"Players want to play in the open court," Blatt said. "They want lots of opportunites to face the basket and be in motion. They want to basketball to be fun. That's the formula. It's worked great over here and as you can see in Phoenix, it can work great in the U.S. too with the right players and coach."
The key is finding a coach who trusts his players and system and can let go a little bit and just let his players play. Blatt has that rep here and it wouldn't surprise me if he were to get a job in the NBA within the next two years. It might be as a head assistant, but at some point I think you'll see Blatt as an NBA head coach.
Messina is a tougher read. He has more experience and more success -- he just won the Euroleague title for CSKA this year. He is a master teacher. He did a clinic at the Reebok Camp on passing that had everyone, NBA execs and coaches included, scribbling down notes. He has a way of simplifying the game for players that is remarkable.
However, he also is very strict, insists on a lot of control and is very hard on players who don't conform to his way. He's defense-oriented and conservative on offense. In other words, he's no D'Antoni. Nevertheless, he's one of the best basketball minds in the business.
"I can see both guys in our league real soon," one NBA executive said. "I think it will be a smooth transition for Blatt. If NBA guys were really doing their homework, he'd probably already be in the U.S. Messina will have more of an adjustment, but he's a hell of a coach.
"It's just going to take a total commitment to him the way [Bulls GM John] Paxson gave to [Bulls head coach Scott] Skiles. With him you have to get the right players and then stick to the game plan. If you do that, he could have a lot of success in the NBA."
5. Here's comes Gherardini.
It's no longer a secret that Benetton GM Maruizio Gherardini is about to accept a position as the assistant GM of the Toronto Raptors as soon as Benetton's season is over. The Raptors' gain is Italy's loss.
Gherardini has been a trailblazer in helping internationalize the NBA game. He has provided a safe harbor overseas for NBA executives and scouts for years. He has helped direct them to talent both in Italy and around the world and, at times, even helped facilitate access.
As former Nuggets GM Kiki Vandeweghe once said to me, "All NBA roads to Europe go through Gherardini."
He ran Benetton's team like a NBA club and has had unprecedented success in Europe. He was and continues to be Europe's ambassador to the game overseas.
He is an excellent addition in Toronto and will use his combination of intelligence, keen talent evaluation and diplomacy to make the Raptors a better club and GM Bryan Colangelo a better leader.
