Don't want to start overhyping Alpha, but dang

[sturt]

... this is #60???

 

 

[TheNorthCydeRises]

7 minutes ago, sturt said:

... this is #60???

 

 

LOL . . come on man.   I hope AKA can turn out to be a little bit of something, but look at the competition he's playing against in these clips.   He reminds me of how Trenton Hassell looks like the greatest b-ball player in the world, when he goes to some of the local rec centers here and plays some pickup ball against the dudes in my city.

I still can't get over the fact that his uniform colors are pink and green.

SKEEE-WEEEEE

 

[Dnice]

Will he be the Alpha male the team is looking for?

 

 

 

[sturt]

16 minutes ago, TheNorthCydeRises said:

LOL . . come on man.   I hope AKA can turn out to be a little bit of something, but look at the competition he's playing against in these clips.   He reminds me of how Trenton Hassell looks like the greatest b-ball player in the world, when he goes to some of the local rec centers here and plays some pickup ball against the dudes in my city.

I still can't get over the fact that his uniform colors are pink and green.

SKEEE-WEEEEE

 

Um. Make fun of the unis at will, but not the caliber of the team... 

http://www.ozy.com/the-huddle/the-road-to-the-nba-passes-through-this-serbian-club/76048

Quote

 

In early January, Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic caught the ball in the post from teammate Jamal Murray. With his back to the basket, Jokic flipped the ball over his shoulder in a perfect no-look dime to his rookie teammate cutting through the lane. It was the kind of move that has made Jokic an NBA unicorn, a singular athlete with no apparent antecedents. Most unicorns, like Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers or Karl-Anthony Towns of the Minnesota Timberwolves, are high draft picks. Jokic, however, was plucked out of obscurity in the second round of the 2014 draft from Mega Leks. Never heard of it? That’s because they’re a Serbian-based team that competes in Europe’s Adriatic League.

Mega Leks may be a long way off the beaten path to the NBA, but they’ve become a hotbed for top prospects drawn from inside and outside of Serbia. Until 2014, only one player from the club had ever been drafted by the NBA — Milovan Rakovic, a 6’10” center tapped in the second round in 2007 by the Dallas Mavericks. He never made it to the American circuit. In the past three drafts, however, three of six players drafted are playing in the big show, including Jokic, the face of the Denver Nuggets. The others are Ivica Zubac, a 7’1” Bosnian center on the Los Angeles Lakers, and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, a French 6’6” shooting guard/small forward on the 76ers. “I think you can compare [Mega Leks] to Kentucky,” says Josh Riddell, an NBA scout for DraftExpress. “They can say, ‘Hey, come play for Mega Leks. We’re going to get you drafted.’”....

 

 

[TheNorthCydeRises]

32 minutes ago, sturt said:

Um. Make fun of the unis at will, but not the caliber of the team... 

http://www.ozy.com/the-huddle/the-road-to-the-nba-passes-through-this-serbian-club/76048

 

I questioned the caliber of players he was playing against.  Just because Jokic played on that team, doesn't mean that they're a hotbed of NBA talent.  If AKA is as good as Ivan Johnson was, I'll be thrilled.  But he honestly doesn't have 1/2 the talent that Ivan did.  Hope I'm dead wrong on that assessment though.   We need good young talent to cultivate into something, especially on the frontline.

[sturt]

4 minutes ago, TheNorthCydeRises said:

I questioned the caliber of players he was playing against.

The two are not unrelated, though, are they?

And, yes, when a team develops some recent history of sending talent to the NBA, can't help but take them a little more seriously myself.

[CP61]

7 minutes ago, sturt said:

The two are not unrelated, though, are they?

And, yes, when a team develops some recent history of sending talent to the NBA, can't help but take them a little more seriously myself.

Jokic is a star talent taken in the second round too. I'm not trying to conpare the two, but that league isn't a joke. 

[KB21]

18 minutes ago, TheNorthCydeRises said:

I questioned the caliber of players he was playing against.  Just because Jokic played on that team, doesn't mean that they're a hotbed of NBA talent.  If AKA is as good as Ivan Johnson was, I'll be thrilled.  But he honestly doesn't have 1/2 the talent that Ivan did.  Hope I'm dead wrong on that assessment though.   We need good young talent to cultivate into something, especially on the frontline.

The guys playing in that league are playing against a higher caliber of competition than the high school kids we overhype over here.  There is some projection there, but he's being tested against other professionals, not rec guys.  

[sturt]

Courtesy of the good people at your friendly neighborhood Wikipedia...

 

Players on the NBA Draft

#	Denotes player who never played in the NBA regular season or playoffs

Position	Player	Year	Round	Pick	Drafted by
C	Milovan Raković#	2007	2nd round	60th	Dallas Mavericks, traded to Chicago Bulls
C	Nikola Jokić	2014	2nd round	41st	Denver Nuggets
PG	Vasilije Micić#	2014	2nd round	52nd	Philadelphia 76ers
SG	Nemanja Dangubić#	2014	2nd round	54th	Philadelphia 76ers, traded to San Antonio Spurs
G/F	Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot	2016	1st round	24th	Philadelphia 76ers
C	Ivica Zubac	2016	2nd round	32nd	Los Angeles Lakers
G/F	Rade Zagorac#	2016	2nd round	35th	Boston Celtics, traded to Memphis Grizzlies
SF	Vlatko Čančar#	2017	2nd round	49th	Denver Nuggets
PG	Ognjen Jaramaz#	2017	2nd round	58th	New York Knicks
PF/C	Alpha Kaba#	2017	2nd round	60th	Atlanta Hawks

 

 

[CP61]

Jokic is one of the best centers in the NBA already, and Zubac looks great overseas. Apparently executives have said he would have easily be a first rounder in this last draft if he had waited a year to declare. In the last 9 games last year TLC got starter minutes for the sixers and averaged 16.8 points and 1.4 steals. In all honesty, that league looks to be becoming a breeding ground for young NBA talent. I'm not saying Alpha will be as good as any of them though. They were all higher picks than him for a reason.

[TheFuzz]

He looks solid, weird frame though.

[sturt]

Let's see what goes on in Vegas. We don't appear to have any bigs who will steal minutes from him. I'm just sayin there's more to like than I'd anticipated in the final pick of the draft. Then again, it was said to be a deeper draft than usual.

[bleachkit]

If you''re 7 feet tall and able bodied, as long as you have a pulse you have a shot at playing professional basketball.

[sturt]

Well, he's 6-10, so not exactly an Edy type, but then again, as mentioned at the presser, he does feature a wingspan just short of Edy's at 7-5 (... Edy's was 7-7, right?).

[Dejay]

Well, regardless of competition, I've already seen more highlights from this dude than I have of several guys the Hawks took in the lottery in years' past. I agree with Sturt here; let's see what he does in Vegas before deciding to ship him back overseas. What could it hurt?

[NBASupes]

Kaba has as much talent as anyone from that squad but he's so raw. I think he should be at a higher level but who knows, maybe he's a better NBA prospect than Euro one.