European Athleticism on Display

Those following the recent influx of international basketball talent into the NBA recognize that no longer do Europeans labor under preconceived notions of athletic inferiority to their American counterparts.

These days, the French are just as likely to fry an assuming defender with a posterizing dunk as a Queens-born rim-basher.

6-8 Nicholas Batum is one such Frenchman. His games smacks of Rudy Gay's, with the tendency to float on the perimeter instead of slash to the rim. I saw his European team, Le Mans, play last year in Istanbul and remember being impressed with the 18-year old's cool manner. It kinda reminded me of Barack Obama. Unfortunately, in averaging 12.3 points, 5 rebounds, and 3.6 assists he often underwhelmed with his apparent lack of fire.

Now he's in Portland, having been drafted at 25 in the 1st round. And, after a summer of seasoning, he's impressing.

The Blazers blogger Mike Barrett wrote:

He was always described to me as someone who could, in time, be a lock-down wing defender. He's got the wing span of a player 7'4", and those long arms caused everyone trouble in those early games. His silky-smooth jumper started falling with regularity, and he started showing the ability to finish, both in traffic, and from the perimeter.

In a recent game, he dropped 16 points, on 7 for 11 shooting (including 2-2 from three), and blocked 3 shots.

How soon until he starts treating NBAers like he did his contemporaries in the 2007 Nike Hoop Summit in Memphis?




In similar news, check out this sickly quick Englishman play ring-around-the-rosies with NBAer Devin Harris (in London for a preseason game)



Evidentally, the dribbling dervish, Stuart Tanner, isn't really that anonymous, at least in his neck of the concrete woods.

It's interesting to note that many of 2000+ posts on J.E. Skeets' blog are filled with people who acknowledge Harris' appropriately unharried nature and even laud Devin for being good lad about being royally burned by one helluva British street baller.