For most European clubs, basketball recruitment has a familiar geography. EuroLeague. EuroCup. The Adriatic League. The Spanish ACB. Maybe a look at the NCAA if someone on the staff has American connections. The mental map…
Basketball produces an enormous amount of data. Points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, turnovers, field goal percentage, true shooting percentage, player efficiency rating, usage rate — the list goes on. For a General Manager or Sporting…
The NBA G League exists to develop players for the NBA. That is its stated purpose and it does that job reasonably well. What it also does, quietly, is produce a steady stream of professional…
For decades, the path from American college basketball to Europe was a one-way street. Players who went undrafted by the NBA would reach out to agents, agents would reach out to European clubs, and occasionally…
The traditional European basketball scouting trip looks something like this. A scout flies to a city they have never visited, watches two or three games over a long weekend, files a report on the players…
Twenty years ago, the archetypal European wing player was a skilled scorer who could operate in the mid-range, post up smaller defenders and occasionally facilitate. Size, footwork and scoring versatility were the defining attributes. Today,…
In the summer of 2019, a European club signed one of the best scorers available on the market. He averaged 22 points per game the previous season. His highlights were spectacular. The agent was persuasive.…
There is a scout sitting in a gym somewhere in Serbia right now. He has flown three hours, paid for a hotel and is watching a player his GM heard about through an agent. The…
Points per game is a lie. Not intentionally. Not maliciously. But as a measure of a basketball player’s offensive value, raw scoring averages are one of the most misleading statistics in the sport. They tell…
The transfer window in European basketball moves fast. Clubs have days, sometimes hours, to identify, evaluate and sign players before a rival does. For decades, that process relied almost entirely on three things: agent relationships,…