If European players are more and more numerous in the NBA, and above all increasingly strong like the last two MVPs to date in the league, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic, who share the last four trophies, this n On the other hand, there is still no mad love between the American league and the coaches of the Old Continent.
After David Blatt, whose track record is among the most impressive in Europe and who noted last September, during the EuroVasket, that ” in the European game the best teams win whereas in the NBA the teams with the best players win, usually it’s this time Sarunas Jasikevicius who showed his skepticism, in a less nuanced way than his colleague, as to the quality of the game produced by the Great League.
The regular season is “unsustainable”
” The NBA is a league where only the owners should be satisfied, since the value of the franchises is exploding, and the cash inflows come from all over the world. » Launches the FC Barcelona coach first, before torpedoing the interest of the regular season. ” But I love basketball, and I can’t stand to watch it, [en NBA]. It is untenable. The playoffs are something else. But the regular season is unbearable. »
Sarunas Jasikevicius points in particular to the systematic imbalance within the American league, with only a few teams capable of aiming for the title each year, while others, at the opposite extreme, are condemned to pile up defeats to better prepare for the ‘coming.
” It’s a parallel world. A business in its purest form » add “Saras”. ” There are about twenty teams which cannot qualify for the playoffs, and which are constantly improvising. And then there are only ten teams that follow a logical plan, that know what they are doing. »
The place of young people, a culture shock between Europe and the NBA
Then the former icon of Panathinaikos to dwell on the subject of young people, and in particular their preponderant place in the NBA, within clubs undergoing reconstruction in particular, unlike in Europe where the youngest players are very rarely key elements of a rotation at their beginnings.
” For a young player, the most important thing is the environment. But [en NBA] they give full powers to kids of 18 or 19, and take it out of the hands of the coach. That does not make any sense he regrets. ” Sometimes it works, like with LeBron James. But how many such examples are there really? Franchises change coaches and leaders so that these kids are satisfied, when the first thing to do is to teach them the path of a professional career, the values of a team. You cannot entrust the keys to a team to an 18-year-old player. It’s hard to believe, when you see that in the NBA.”
