Zarko won't play at European Championships

[slinslin]

Zarko won't play at European Championships // plus Big Jake updates

He declined the invitation. When he left the US after summer league he went to serbia-montenegro to practice with other NBA players like Rebraca, Radmanovic and Nesterovic.

I guess he will participate during informal workouts at AWA that start next week.

 

[jbeecham]

That's good news for us anyways. We need him here to learn our system and get familiar with the rest of the guys on our team. Besides, I doubt he would have played much on his euro team.

 

[JJ Slim]

Has anybody heard how Big Jake is doing with his team? He was supposed to join them after the summer leagues got over.

 

[slinslin]

I only heard from some greece fans that he is exactly what they were lacking.

 

[slinslin]

"Gianni Ioanidis has revealed how he intervened on star centre Iakovos "Jake" Tsakalidis's behalf earlier this year to get him out of hot water with the Greek army."

"Tsakalidis's towering presence gives the Greeks quite a lift.

The Suns centre has three years of NBA experience under his belt, although he is coming off his most difficult campaign during which he missed much of the season after back surgery.

He had his operation on January 2 and missed 34 games from December 29 through March 11.

Before that he was unable to play for five games from December 6 with a bulging disk.

Any doubts about his fitness were erased with his superlative performances for Greece in games against Australia, Bulgaria and Serbia & Montenegro.

If Greece are looking for causes to be optimistic at the Olympics, Tsakalidis may be the biggest reason to hope in basketball."


http://www.eurobasket2003.com/uk/nyheter.asp?showid=518

lol

"A trio of players with NBA experience laid the foundation for victory - Jake Tsakalidis, Efthimios Rentzias (photo: FIBA-AFP archive) and Antonis Fotsis."
http://www.eurobasket2003.com/uk/nyheter.asp?showid=522

The radio said that Tsakalidis is the real difference between this team and the team that failed 2 years ago at the last Eurobasket.
He really helps a lot with his blocks and rebounds and the other 4 players can press more now on defense, because they know they have a giant waiting in the middle to block shots.

There is a pic of Big Jake

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Tsakalidis is VERY improved and Fotsis has regained the confidence he almost lost last year because of the way Obradovic treated him and was the all-around player we know.

Rentzias isn't really that good. When he plays instead of Jake the team looks much worse.

Our basket will have a HUGE hole when Tsakalidis is out as Rentzias doesn't like to play physical........Someone has to teach this guy to get mean otherwise players like Femmerling will do huge damage to us if Tsakalidis is out....

 

[JJ Slim]

Thanks a bunch, slinslin!

It sounds like either Jake is kicking some booty or the Greek team really stinks.

 

[slinslin]

Big Jake leads the greece team in scoring so far at 13ppg in the games leading up to the EC:

And Greece is among the top 5-6 favorites.

 

[SirStefan32]

If he could average that for the Suns next year, they'll be going into WC finals.

 

[slinslin]

Unfortunately I think that some of his success in europe is simply because of not picking up so many fouls and being able to be agressive defensively.

They allow more contact in european leagues on defense I would say although the general perception is that europeans are soft and bad defensively. They play rough defense.

 

[cardsunsfan]

Sounds good. I've always thought Johnson should use Big Jake more. If he ever gets really good, Watch out! We'll be really good. Remember when Jake had a really good string of games with us and he was scoring like 20 points? I remember them taking him out for awhile and he never seemed to get his touch back. I think Jake might need consistant minutes to be effective. I think he'd do better with a set role with the team.

 

[SirStefan32]

At the end of the 2001/2002 season, he and Marbury were running that pick 'n' roll a la Stockton and Malone.