Thursday, November 6, 2008

Where in the world is Tadija Dragicevic and Ante Tomic?

It's very reasonable if you forgot this, but with their last draft pick from last seasons' NBA Draft the Jazz picked Tadija Dragicevic (2nd round, Pick #53 overall). In this All-Star game video he is on the East team and wearing #5. (The white jerseys) First of all this tells us a few things: a) he's not an imaginary player, and b) he's good enough to make an All-Star team somewhere professionally. Both are good signs for certain. [btw, don't show Jerry Sloan this video, there's no defense, especially not when Tadija just watches guys shoot the ball near him without even putting an arm up]

But let's try to dig up a bit more info on this European man of mystery. According to Wikipedia (yeah I know, it's a great source) he's 6'9 and weighs 235 lb. . . . and he wears #20. (Quincy Lewis' old number for you Jazz fans out there) He is 22 years old right now and this Serbian plays power forward. Which is funny because I could have sworn that he was projected as a SF in the NBA according to some web sites like ESPN.com; though DraftExpress.com suggests that he's a PF though. What's interesting is what people say about him . . . ESPN's Chad Ford says:

"Who? Not exactly a household name, and I've never seen this guy. He doesn't look like much of an NBA player, but this late in the draft, you can't ignore the numbers he's putting up in the ULEB." (Chad Ford, ESPN.com)

I don't know what the ULEB is, it sounds like some computer thing, or some acronym used by 'the kids' today with their texting. (sorry, txting) For the record, the ULEB is the Union of European Leagues of Basketball . . . and within the union of these leagues our boy Drazillah the Killah plays in the Adriatic league -- OH CRAP!

He got injured (I'm assuming) this year . . . he's only played in 1 game, and only played 17:30 minutes in it. The only stats that he has is that he made 6 foul shots in that game. That totally sucks because he was the MVP of that league last season. Why? I'll tell you why . . . because he scored 20.5 ppg (52.0 fg%, 45.1 3pt%, 81.0 ft%), 5.9 rpg, 1.4 apg and lead his team to a good record, I guess. I don't know. This website is kinda hard to figure out. And the news (assumed) that he's injured sucks. Let's move around to our other draft pick in the 2nd round -- Ante Tomic . . .

Duhhhhhhhh

A-Tomic is probably my favorite player ever from Dubrovnik ever. He's Croatian, and that could pose an interesting dynamic with the Serbian Dragicevic. You know, in the off chance that we ever bring either of them over to the NBA.

He's one year younger than Tadija, and he's a full blooded 7'1 center. He has no weight worth noting.

So far this season he's averaging 17.2 ppg (54.3 fg%, 0.0 3pt%, 77.1 ft%), 10.4 rpg, 1.5 apg, 0.8 spg, 1.7 bpg and as the top value rating of the entire league right now. (I think this is how they figure out who's the MVP, like how Tadijilla D'Razillia was last season -- kind of like the IBM Award they used to have in the NBA)

I think it's pretty clear why the Jazz actually drafted Tadija in the first place -- because they were scouting Ante, and while they were looking in that league they found this other guy who was EVEN MORE under the radar than Ante Tomic -- they just HAD to draft that other guy. Anyway . . . the Orlando / Philly game is really dull. How dull? So dull that I'm surfing around on the NLB Liga ABA website. Damn you NBA schedule makers! You win this round!

1 comments:

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