Strickland33
Well-known member
We recruited Jordan Mathews in high school and he had a solid career at Cal. He's a west coast guy, but I wonder if we are interested:
No
ETA: I didn't intend for that to be snarky. You may be overestimating the quality of NCAA basketball, ACC basketball in particular. Like Wrangor said, athletic bigs are a hot commodity in most lower level leagues (and in general, if you think about it), but an average scholarship ACC player is going to have to work their ass off to play professional basketball anywhere, let alone in a decent league. Asia, South America, and North American minor leagues are a different story, but European basketball ain't no joke.
We recruited Jordan Mathews in high school and he had a solid career at Cal. He's a west coast guy, but I wonder if we are interested:
I find it hard to believe all Euro leagues are the same. Swedish league, a country where they don't even really play basketball, is not the same as Italy.
An ACC player averaging more as a pro player than his career high in college is impressive regardless of the league.
I don't know. You get more minutes in the NBA. Jordan's career high at UNC-CH was 39 and he averaged 30.1 as a pro. There's got to be somebody else who averaged more as a pro.
I'm sure Willie Parker did, but wrong sport.
Marvin Williams maybe? Some of the one-and-done potential guys have probably done it, but I'm not looking it up. Kyrie probably.
I don't know. You get more minutes in the NBA. Jordan's career high at UNC-CH was 39 and he averaged 30.1 as a pro. There's got to be somebody else who averaged more as a pro.
I never claimed that all Euro leagues are the same. I also didn't claim that Italian leagues are the same as Swedish leagues, but you're right - they're not the same.
My point is that - depending on what you're trying to claim - Swedish leagues are probably more competitive than you would expect and a lot of ACC scholarship players are pretty terrible. A lot of high major college players can't carve out careers at even low levels in Europe. It's tougher than you'd think, which is why Weaver's career has been pretty impressive.
Durant, Westbrook, Thompson just passed his college numbers.
I think you are way overestimating Swedish Basketball. A 10 minute search yielded a 37 year old center who played Division II basketball that was averaging 20 and 10 until three years ago (he's still in the league).
DreamWeaver is in Turkey now (a significantly better league), but even there he's not the only underperforming Power 5 big man doing well (Mikael Hopkins from Georgetown).
Shockingly, you're not paying attention to the issue at hand.
Durant's career high in college was 37 points per game. His NBA career average is 27.4 points per game, which is not higher than 37.
The pro game is longer and shot clock is shorter. Not too surprising to me. I would bet many top guys beat their college numbers. Now for a guy who gets 4 points in college, that's quite surprising.
I would also guess that middle school players averages are higher than high school players. And high school players averages are higher that colleges.