Let's get Skita off waivers.

[Diesel]

That way we will fill our quota with 7 foot Europlayers with lots of promise.

So we could actually draft a power player to play PF.

[KB21]

Diesel is already starting the bashing of Andrea Bargnani, and it just so happens that Barganani appears to be the most likely player the Hawks will take at this point. If the Hawks do take Andrea Bargnani, get ready for the daily trade Barganani threads from Diesel.

[tmac13]

Honestly KB, unless Bargnani can play the 5 we don't need him..We are better off trading the pick..BK's time is up..The Hawks ownership won't happily bend over for him giving them another year celler dwelling...If Bargnani is a 3/4 combo as widely advertised, who do you want to ride the bench, him, Marvin or Smoove?..

[DrReality]

Who did he play for???

[Lascar78]

He plays for the suns, got a couple of minutes last night

[BusBoyIsBack]

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Diesel is already starting the bashing of Andrea Bargnani, and it just so happens that Barganani appears to be the most likely player the Hawks will take at this point. If the Hawks do take Andrea Bargnani, get ready for the daily trade Barganani threads from Diesel.

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I don't think Diesel will have to worry about that seeing that we can only get Bargnani with a top 4-5 pick and the draft will most definitely screw us over and have us at 6 or 7.

[BusBoyIsBack]

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Honestly KB, unless Bargnani can play the 5 we don't need him..We are better off trading the pick..BK's time is up..The Hawks ownership won't happily bend over for him giving them another year celler dwelling...If Bargnani is a 3/4 combo as widely advertised, who do you want to ride the bench, him, Marvin or Smoove?..

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In case you didn't notice, the NBA has changed. You don't need a true Center anymore to succeed. Is Big Ben Wallace a 7 footer? Is Boris Diaw a true center?

Looks like those teams are doing well.

As far as comparing Bargnani to Skita, the only two things those two have in common is that they are both 7 foot European big men that played for Benetton Treviso.

Look at Skita's numbers in the European league.

Andrea Bargnani's numbers are closer to Dirk's than they are to Skita's numbers. Skita barely saw the floor and as you can see he barely had any production.

http://thedraftreview.com/history/drafted2...li-Nickoloz.htm

[Diesel]

Right now, Bargnani projects as a Sf.

Skita is already a PF. He's about 240 for sure. If Bargnani were 240, I wouldn't have a problem with him. I've said that before. However, what good does it do us to get a player who is:

1. NOT A POWER PLAYER.

2. NOT THE APPROPIATE SIZE TO PLAY THE POSITION WE NEED.

Skita is a former 5th pick who should be very cheap.

Plus, He's european... I mean that is the main thing right?

[Diesel]

I was reading an article from early 2005 saying that Skita had gained 25 lbs since he came in the league. He came in the league at 215... Click here

[Plainview1981]

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That way we will fill our quota with 7 foot Europlayers with lots of promise.

So we could actually draft a power player to play PF.

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Skita doesn't have much talent and shouldn't be in the league.

[BusBoyIsBack]

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Right now, Bargnani projects as a Sf.

Skita is already a PF. He's about 240 for sure. If Bargnani were 240, I wouldn't have a problem with him. I've said that before. However, what good does it do us to get a player who is:

1. NOT A POWER PLAYER.

2. NOT THE APPROPIATE SIZE TO PLAY THE POSITION WE NEED.

Skita is a former 5th pick who should be very cheap.

Plus, He's european... I mean that is the main thing right?

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Not the appropriate size? So I guess Joakim Noah who would have gone 1st overall is a big diesel donwl low (no pun intended).

Sure Bargnani may need to add about 10-15 pounds but for a 7 foot man that's hardly a lot.

You're just hating on the man because he's European but the fact of the matter is there have been several international stars that have come over including Gasol, Peja, Ginobli, Big Z, Dirk, etc.

The bottomline is that unlike players like Skita, Bargnani has actually produced during his time in the Euroleague.

http://www.euroleague.net/noticia.jsp?temp...a=23&id=901

More often than not, the players that produce overseas, don't turn out to be busts like the players that barely got playing time or put up any type of production like Nikoloz T.

[Duff_Man]

Except that Skita has proven over and over (outside of one or two pre-season camp games) that he is not an NBA player.

Edit: of course, if we DO pick him up and he sucks, we can just release or trade him and resurrect his career!

[Seano]

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Let's get Skita off waivers

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I'm assuming you're being facetious here, as obviously Skita has not yet hit the waiver wire, since his team is still playing in the postseason.

At any rate, unless you have inside information it's pretty difficult to say what the Suns plans are for Skita- whether they plan on keeping him, trading him, waiving him, or whatever.

If they do waive him, somebody out there will take a shot at him, maybe hoping to catch another Darko type situation like Orlando did. Skita's still essentially unproven far as I'm concerned- beyond his rookie season in which he played 16 minutes a game, he's never played more than 7.9 minutes per in any season. Next year will be his 5th season in the league, but he just turned 23 years old last month.

If not Phoenix, then somebody will give him a shot. A player like that and who once had such great potential, will always draw interest from at least a few teams. And who knows, maybe some team will luck out and find that with the proper guidance and coaching, they'll have gotten themselves a useful player. I have learned to never say never.

[BusBoyIsBack]

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Let's get Skita off waivers

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I'm assuming you're being facetious here, as obviously Skita has not yet hit the waiver wire, since his team is still playing in the postseason.

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Yes he is being facetious. This thread was made to take a shot at Andrea Bargnani. Interesting enough because just a while back Diesel was on the "Bargain man" bandwagon but I guess his recollection of European big men that haven't made it changed his mind.

But what Diesel and all the rest of the critics of Bargnani need to realize is that most of these big men like Skita that didn't turn out, weren't that productive in the Euroleague.

More often than not if you're considered a big time player in the Euroleague, you aren't going to be a complete flop in the NBA.

I don't know if some of you know this or not but the Euroleague is better than college basketball.

[Popeye]

One big thing that seperates Bargnani from Skita is his agressivness. I watched both guys play and Bargnani wants the ball and is very confident with everything he does and Skita is opposite of that.

[Diesel]

Skita was only picked up for this season by the Suns. IN the offseason he will be a FA. I'm kinda old school, I consider that situation to be him on waivers because I don't think that Phoenix will sign him before he's a FA.

Skita is still very young. I think he's younger than Darko.

Why not take a chance on him.

Then we could draft a true Power Player out of the draft.

[Diesel]

For me...

Taking Bargain Man with a draft pick is settling.

I was thinking it made since to take a 7 footer... but then I realized that if that 7 footer is just another Sf in disguise... a guy that will spend more time around the Arc than in the post... Why should we draft him.

We talk about his size and that's very relevant... If Guys could just gain weight, then Demarr Johnson would be 230 by now. However, the other thing is style of play. Can this guy play in the post? The answer is a definite No. But nobody wants to talk about that. Moreover, people think that us playing in the post is not important. I shake my head at that.

[Seano]

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I was thinking it made since to take a 7 footer... but then I realized that if that 7 footer is just another Sf in disguise... a guy that will spend more time around the Arc than in the post... Why should we draft him.

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Well, just look at the scouting reports and read what the fans over in Europe have to say about him. That's all we have to go by, since none of us have ever seen him play.

Every scouting report I've seen states that he compares very favorably to a young Dirk Nowitzki. If that's really true, and assuming we're picking at 5 or 6 and Aldridge is already long gone- then it'd be awfully hard to pass on Bargnani in that case, whether you think he meets a need for us or not. What team out there wouldn't want a Dirk Nowitzki type player?

[Diesel]

Click

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Maybe calling him the NBA's destiny's child is the best way to describe Nikoloz Tskitishvili.

Shortly after being drafted fifth overall by the Denver Nuggets in the 2002 NBA Draft, Nikoloz Tskitishvili poses in his new jersey following a news conference at the Pepsi Center.

Growing up in the Republic of Georgia, it was Tskitishvili who introduced basketball to Tskitishvili. Now 19, with a great deal to learn about basketball - and life - the rookie is viewed as a potential savior for a Denver Nuggets organization that last saw the playoffs when he was 12. Whether he can lead the Nuggets to the postseason, only time will tell. But the 7-foot, 225-pound small forward could be a fantastic story in the making.

"Nobody told me to play basketball," said Tskitishvili, selected fifth overall by the Nuggets in last month's draft. "It was just my will, my wish. That is why I went to play basketball."

On April 14, 1983, the Nuggets were close to finishing a season in which they would advance to the Western Conference semifinals. In Tbilisi, Georgia, in the then-Soviet Union, a boy named Nikoloz Tskitishvili (SKEE-tish-vee-lee) was born to a father who stood 6-5 and a 5-10 mother.

Tskitishvili didn't get the chance to build a father-son bond - his dad died in a car crash when he was 2 years old. Although his mother, Guliko, remarried when he was 9, Tskitishvili never developed a strong relationship with his stepfather. Tskitishvili, who became an instant millionaire after being drafted by Denver, said as a child his family had "less than the norm."

"I always had food; we did not go hungry," Tskitishvili said. "But we did not have anything special or buy a lot of clothes or have a car. I had clothes, but nothing special like Versace."

Boogie fever

Tskitishvili was something special at moving his feet to his native Georgian traditional dance. He was so good, in fact, that at age 9, he became a professional dancer on the national team.

His ever-increasing height did become a problem, however.

"When I was 6 years old I started to dance," Tskitishvili said. "But I grew up to be too tall. My dance partner was too small. It was a very popular dance. When I was 9, I was on the Georgian national team that was like the Dream Team here."

Although Tskitishvili became an accomplished dancer, he left the dance floor for the hardwood after another former Dream Team member caught his eye.

Tskitishvili fell in love with the NBA via television. He joined kids all over the world in becoming a huge Michael Jordan fan as a teen. He began collecting any NBA memorabilia he could get his hands on.

Dancing soon was forgotten, and he began playing street basketball as much as possible. Wanting to go farther than just shooting jumpers on a Tbilisi playground, a 12-year-old Tskitishvili, now 5-9, walked into a sports school called Kohla hoping to convince the basketball coach to pick him.

"I went by myself to a sports school gym," Tskitishvili said. "When I came into the gym and introduced myself to the coach, he was very happy to see me. He told me that I had everything to play basketball: tall, fast, good footwork. He said that I had the talent. I was on the team for four years."

Turning pro

Before his professional career began, a European scout from the Minnesota Timberwolves tried to convince Tskitishvili to play collegiately in the United States. Tskitishvili declined because his family needed his financial support, instead playing professionally in Europe.

Tskitishvili, a 7-foot teenager from the Republic of Georgia, takes one of his first looks at his new uniform.

Tskitishvili played a season in Slovenia before joining Benetton Treviso in Italy in January, coached by former Nuggets coach Mike D'Antoni. While his height and skills were apparent, Italian basketball politics, his age and lack of experience led to limited playing time. He did not play in the title game in which Benetton Treviso clinched the Italian A League championship.

Even so, Tskitishvili's potential drew raves from NBA teams. But even Tskitishvili admitted during a visit in Italy by the Golden State Warriors that he had no idea how good he could be because he never played.

"I hope he fools people and shows that he is more ready than people think," said D'Antoni, now an assistant with the Phoenix Suns.

D'Antoni said he believes Tskitishvili can gain 20 pounds during the next six months. "He's going to be good. But his hype has been so high that people will be expecting a lot. They need to be patient because he is years away.

"Skill-wise, he is off the chart. He just needs experience."

Nuggets debut

Saturday marked a major day in Tskitishvili's young career. The kid from a less-than-average background signed his first NBA contract. And that night, the rookie made his Nuggets debut at the Rocky Mountain Revue in Salt Lake City.

Denver opened against the host Utah Jazz and a near sold-out, pro-Jazz crowd at Salt Lake Community College. One player the Jazz faithful was eager to see was 2002 all-rookie small forward Andrei Kirilenko, who was starting against Tskitishvili. About 45 minutes before the game, Tskitishvili was quite nervous. But after tipoff, the new Nugget showed why he was so heralded.

Early in the game, Tskitishvili got rid of his butterflies with a fast-break layup. Later in the first quarter with the shot clock running down, he made a pretty crossover dribble that left Kirilenko off-balance, dribbled backward through his legs and lofted a deep 3-pointer in time. Even Jazz fans cheered in appreciation. The Nuggets won 64-53 and Tskitishvili was the star after scoring a game-high 16 points on 5-of-10 shooting, making all five of his free-throw attempts and nabbing two steals in 28 minutes.

"Skita hit some nice shots," said Nuggets assistant Jeff Bzdelik, who is coaching the summer league team. "Again, it's a learning process. We'll take this, and hopefully he'll get better from it. He did a nice job."

Said Tskitishvili: "It really helped my confidence."

Tskitishvili has been compared to all-stars Kevin Garnett and Dirk Nowitzki and 2002 rookie of the year Pau Gasol.

While comparisons are inevitable for Tskitishvili, Nuggets general manager Kiki Vandeweghe wants him to make his own name.

"It's different," Vandeweghe said.

"At the same point, Dirk played a lot, and it still took him a year and half to get to a position where he was an effective player. Now he is one of the best players in the league. I don't think those type of comparisons are fair. They are different types of players. Tskitishvili will be a great player in his own right."

Skita unplugged

Three days after he was drafted, a bored Tskitishvili entered the basketball complex at the Athletic Club at Denver Place downtown and began watching some games. Wearing a New York Yankees jersey, jeans and Allen Iverson Reeboks - and with a major contract pending - the kid nicknamed Skita understandably wasn't interested in joining these basketball mortals. But Tskitishvili made a couple friends afterward, including Warren Boizot. His new buddies took him in for much of the rest of weekend, giving him a tour of downtown Denver.

Tskitishvili asked Boizot and his friends to take him to a shoe store to find some size 16 sneakers. The first two stops met with failure, and none of the employees recognized the potential all-star in their midst.

With lunchtime approaching, Boizot and pals invited Tskitishvili to a downtown Mexican restaurant. Tired of eating hotel and Italian food, Tskitishvili was eager for his first taste of Mexican cuisine.

"He loved it," Boizot said. "He had steak burrito and quesadillas. That was the first time he had Mexican food. He took one bite, and it was like he had the best thing ever. He lit up, big-time."

Boizot didn't see Tskitishvili as the average 19-year-old. Having played away from home for several years, Tskitishvili has been used to being on his own. Then consider he can speak five languages - Georgian, English, Slovenian, Serbian and Russian - and a little Italian.

"I don't know too many guys I would hang out with that are 19, but it never seemed like it because he is so mature," said Boizot, 31. "The language barrier was a little difficult. But as long as you talked through things, he understands and listens. I can't imagine an American kid drafted straight out of high school being half as mature as he is. With everything he has dealt with, he is so ahead of the game."

Boizot saw the kid in Tskitishvili when they entered the ESPN Zone.

Tskitishvili was ecstatic to see all the video games. He and his newfound friends played basketball, football and boxing games. Employees began to recognize him, giving him complimentary game passes and taking pictures.

"He had no perspective on the fame thing," Boizot said. "He was wondering why he would get treated different than anybody else."

The next day, Boizot and his friends gave Tskitishvili his first introduction to baseball when the Colorado Rockies hosted the San Diego Padres. The crew tried to explain America's pastime to no avail. Sitting in a section near left field, Tskitishvili put his long legs in the aisle. A disgruntled usher pleaded for the youngster to put his feet in front of his seat before realizing it wasn't possible.

Tskitishvili enjoyed eating Dip-N-Dots ice cream, and the hip-hop fan appreciated the music from the loudspeakers. But it's safe to say Tskitishvili won't be at Coors Field again any time soon.

"For 25 minutes, I was waiting for them to pitch. It was boring," Tskitishvili said.

He's got next

Early next month, Tskitishvili expects his mom and 12-year-old brother, George, to obtain visas and join him in Denver. Guliko still is in shock over her eldest son being drafted. In many ways, Nikoloz is in shock, too.

But now that he is a Nugget, he wants to prove that he will live up to expectations.

"Everybody is waiting for me to be something special. Everybody is waiting for me to become a good player. I want to try really hard to become a good player," Tskitishvili said before shooting numerous jumpers after practice ended Wednesday night.

"I want to be like Gasol or Kirilenko," he said. "I am a maybe little nervous, because I really want to try to become a good player. I know I can. I do well in practice and I practice a lot. I just love practice.

"Maybe I am thinking that (I can be a star), but I can't say that. We'll just have to wait."

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Every Europlayer who makes it to the lottery is the next ___________.... Normally Dirk or Gasol.

I figure, it's been a few years for Skita... Maybe he has filled in the blanks where he needed to. Let's make an offer and fill our unknown europlayer quota.

[mudderfudder77]

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Click

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Every Europlayer who makes it to the lottery is the next ___________.... Normally Dirk or Gasol.

I figure, it's been a few years for Skita... Maybe he has filled in the blanks where he needed to. Let's make an offer and fill our unknown europlayer quota.

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You do realize that unlike Dirk, Pau, or Bargnani that Skita didn't even play in the Euroleagues? Skita played 6 games for Benneton averaging 6 minuts and less than a point a game - in contrast to Bargnani who averages are well known on this board (but just to refresh)11pts on 55% fg 4rebs in 20 minuts a game. Skita moved from the junior leagues, to 6 games with Benneton, to the NBA.

The only thing Nikoli and Bargnani have in common is the funny pronunciations of their last names. Nikoli was drafted strictly on potential, while Bargnani has proven it at the highest level of basketball outside of the NBA.