starvydas

As some of you may know, the European Championships are taking place in Sweden, until the 14th of September. Since there's not much going on in the NBA, I thought I'd give some insight about how NBA players are doing for their national team. As of now the qualification stage has ended and each team has played three games.

After the retirement of the Croatian golden generation, embodied by European legends such as Toni Kukoc, Dino Radja or the late Drazen Petrovic, Croatia has entered a new era and has now become an average team in Europe,as proven by their record in the qualification stage (1-2). The leader of the squad is Orlando's Gordan Giricek, who has played well throughout his first three games. He leads his team in scoring with 16 points per game (but shoots only at 43.9% from the field) to go with 4 rebounds per game. His first game against Greece was a bit disappointing as he shot 5/15 from the floor (4/7 free throws) for 15 points in a tense 77-76 loss. He still had 8 rebounds and 3 assists in this game. He was however excellent against Ukraine in his second game, going for 21 points with accurate shooting (8/11 field goals, including 3/5 three pointers) but that was expected since Ukraine is one of the weakest team in the tournament. Croatia then played Turkey and once again had to suffer a heart breaking loss in the final moments of the game (75-72). Giricek had a good game defensively but struggled on offense where he could only score 12 points on 5/15 shooting. Croatia will now face Andrei Kirilenko's Russia for a place in the quarterfinals.

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Hallelujah I'm a Bum !

JNice

Thanks for the info. I love Giri. I'm hoping that he can mature some the next couple of years. He seems to get down on himself pretty easily, like last years playoffs. He was horrible for like 3 straight games and finally snapped out of it. He has great all-around skills and ability, hopefully he can improve on his consistency. If he does that, I think he could end up being a better player than Mike Miller because he is much better at taking the ball to the basket.

Hrvoje

Giricek was injured in the last game against Russia, I think it wasn't seroius, but we'll see later.

c_dog

well, win or lose, i think this experience will definitely make Griricek a even better player next season. can't wait to see him play in the magic uniform.