Overseas Round-Up: Early-Season Sleepers – NBA Draft Digest
As many international basketball leagues hit the one-month mark, a few names not originally forecast as NBA prospects have stood out in their respective national leagues. In this edition of overseas summarylet’s take a look at two different international talents, their play early in the season and how they pose as potential NBA draft picks.
Is Armel Traore hidden from view?
Imagine you’re a young player and you’re teammates with the most over-analyzed NBA draft prospect since LeBron James. The good news is that you have a clear chance of getting noticed considering everyone in the basketball world is watching your games. However, just because people are watching your games doesn’t necessarily mean they’re paying attention shespecial.
Armel Traore is a 6ft 8 forward who plays right alongside Victor Wembanyama at Metropolitans 92. Traore, who turns 20 in January, has been a prominent figure, particularly in European youth basketball, for a number of years due to his impressive physical tools and athleticism. This year, Traore seems to have taken the next step, turning what was once raw athletics into actual winning tools.
In his last game before heading to the US for two highly publicized matchups against G League Ignite, Traore exploded for 16 points while adding six rebounds, two steals and a block in a win over Le Portel. Traore showed his athleticism, finishing with power at the rim, but also on the defensive end of the floor, where he played a role not only as a rim protector but also as a full-back, curbing riders with his lateral mobility.
It’s still early in the season and Traore hasn’t played nearly enough to confirm whether those flashes of potential are indeed sustainable: since the game against Le Portel, Trarore has only played about nine minutes per game on average. If he can find consistent minutes in the Metropolitans’ rotation and maintain his productivity, it’s easy to imagine a team interested in his profile as a 3-and-D forward with optimal physical tools. All it takes is for a team to look their way.
Marek Blazevic and the value of specialization
The late second round of the NBA draft is often referred to as the “crapshoot,” and as such, some of the draft’s low-floor/high-ceiling bets are placed between the 45th and 60th picks in the draft.
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However, when it comes to international prospects, there are some examples of players being picked late in the second round who break that mold. Generally older, middle-floor, low-ceilinged players who are drafted after having at least a full season of solid performance under their belt while playing vital minutes in a top international league. The common thread between these players is generally their consistency at a particular basketball skill that could later make them specialists.
One prospect chiming in on this conversation is Marek Blazevic, a 21-year-old, 6ft 11, Lithuanian centre-back who currently plays for Obradoiro in Spain’s ACB. He was very productive early in the season, averaging 9.5 points, 5.8 rebounds and 0.8 blocks with 57.3% true shooting.
Blazevic plays as a traditional offensive center who is extremely good at making shots around the basket. He displays a combination of size, footwork, coordination and touch under the rim, making him a scoring threat in the paint in both post-ups and easy catch-and-finish situations, although he’s not great as a finisher on the rim is explosive.
Despite his productivity, Blazevic’s case as an NBA prospect becomes flimsy when you look at his defensive profile. His rim defending power ranges from non-existent to negative, as he’s not really switchable in space and even his rim protection is limited given his lack of explosiveness from a standing start.
The bottom line is that Blazevic does one thing really well, which is scoring on the fringes, and NBA teams have shown they value older international specialists (like 2017’s Sasha Vezenkov or 2019’s Vanja Marinkovic) enough to put them in the late second retract rounds. It sounds like a stretch, but at the end of the day it only takes a team that appreciates Blazevic and his inner creativity enough to overlook the defensive limitations.
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