Don't ask about Donatas

On Sunday I mentioned Donatas Motiejunas in passing, then lo' and behold ESPN.com's draft Guru Chad Ford lists him as one of the players whose draft stock is on the rise. He said:

"Donatas Motiejunas, F, Lithuania
Every year NBA GMs fly around the world looking for the next Dirk Nowitzki. There have been lots of pretenders -- from Nikoloz Tskitishvilli to Vladimir Radmanovic to Andrea Bargnani (who actually looks pretty good this season) to Danilo Gallinari -- but the next Nowitzki has proven to be pretty elusive. This year's Dirk wannabe is Motiejunas -- a 7-foot, 215-pound forward who, you guessed it, runs the floor, has a pretty jumper and can play multiple positions.

Motiejunas has many of the same red flags as those other guys. Scouts say he is soft, needs to add a lot of strength and is playing against watered down competition in Lithuania. However, he's averaging more than 20 points and shooting around 50 percent from 3-point territory -- that's not bad for an 18-year-old in any league in Europe. While it's highly likely he stays in Europe for another season, a couple of international scouts are telling me there are rumblings he might leave.

Said one NBA executive who watched Motiejunas this year: "He's the closest kid I've seen to Dirk coming out of Europe. Honestly. I know what you're thinking. But this kid could be really good."

Somewhere, Bill Simmons is licking his chops for the third round of our annual draft debate." (Ford, ESPN.com, 2008)

I still don't want the Jazz to get interested in this guy, and thankfully, he does not appear to be in draft range of where we'll be picking. Yet . . . this was a pretty cool co-incidence that I blog about a guy, and a few days later, ESPN mentions that guy.

Final 2008 Olympic Standings & Updated FIBA Rankings

Photo by: Sergio Perez (Reuters)

No doubt, if you are crazy enough to be reading this blog, you stayed up last night to watch the Gold Medal Game. (And what a game it was!) Anyhoo . . . here are the final rankings for the 2008 Olympic Games and the updated FIBA Rankings. (Oh yeah, that's right, USA isn't #1 after all. Huh?)

	2008 Olympic Games			Rank (Previous rank from January, 2008)	FIBA Top 20 Rankings	Pts.
1 - Gold	USA	8 - 0		1 (3)	Argentina	876
2 - Silver	Spain	6 - 2		2 (1)	USA	832.2
3 - Bronze	Argentina	6 - 2		3 (5)	Spain	730
4	Lithuania	5 - 3		4 (11)	Greece	499
5	Greece	3 - 3		5 (2)	Serbia	469
6	Croatia	3 - 3		6 (6)	Lithuania	411
7	Australia	3 - 3		7 (14)	Germany	329
8	China	2 - 4		8 (4)	Italy	308
9	Russia	1 - 4		9 (8)	Australia	269
10	Germany	1 - 4		10 (12)	China	262.7
11	Iran	0 - 5		11 (9)	Puerto Rico	232.6
12	Angola	0 - 5		12 (17)	Angola	206
				13 (18)	Turkey	203
				14 (16)	New Zealand	187
				15 (7)	Russia	181
				16 (15)	Brazil	173.6
				17 (10)	France	169
				18 (19)	Croatia	165
				19 (13)	Canada	124.2
				20 (-)	Slovenia	124

Biggest risers / Biggest Fall since the end of EuroBasket 2007:

Greece and Germany both went up 7 spots -- partly due to their rankings in the pre-Olympic Qualifying tournament. Turkey and Angola both went up 5 spots -- Angola's ranking is inflated because their FIBA score happens to be buoyed by ranked wins against other FIBA Africa nations. (yes, their relative earned win score is less, but they still have to face easier comp than, say, the European or American teams) Furthermore, Angola is still ranked higher than Turkey, but if the two teams played I'm pretty sure Turkey would win -- Angola doesn't have anyone on their roster taller than 6'5, if I remember correctly. The Turks are huge up front (arguably bigger than Spain, Greece and Russia in the paint).

Italy, led by Andrea Bargnani (of the Toronto Raptors), Marco Belinelli (of the Golden State Warriors) and new kid on the block Danilo Gallinari fell 4 spots since the end of 2007. Canada, bereft of 'professionally' acting professionals fell 6 spots in 8 months. France, with a ton of NBA talent (Parker, Diaw, Pietrus, Diawara, Mahinmi, Turiaf, etc) went down an impressive 7 FIBA spots, Russia (who won EuroBasket 2007, and didn't make it out of the round robin part of the Olympics) fell 8 spots. France and Russia were both Top 10 teams 8 months ago. How the mighty have fallen!

Wait, The USA won the Gold Medal, isn't that worth +50 points at the very least, why are they #2?

I don't know. But for those who want to know, FIBA Asia champion Iran is ranked #23 in the world. Actually, the Top 25 rounds out to be: Venezuela (95.2), Nigeria (93.6), Iran (73.1), Lebanon (70.5) and Israel (60.0). If you want to see the full list, you know, if you wanted to confirm that India (#46, 9.9 pts.) was ranked higher than the Philippines (#63, 4.2 pts.) you could click here.

Flashback Friday: David Benoit

For most Jazz fans David Benoit is/was/will always be remembered as a pariah. I grew up watching Jazz put out front lines of Malone and Bailey, and then Malone and Corbin . . . when Malone and Benoit came around I had seen plenty of Jazz sets that ran Stockton, Eaton, two inside scoring forwards and a shooting guard (e.g. Griffith, or Jeff Malone).

David Benoit was a hard dunking small forward who was long and athletic. Unfortunately for him, his game half translated to how the NBA game was changing. Back in the 80s and very early 90s you could get away with being a small forward with no outside shot. Things were changing in the mid 90s, where everyone from Pippen to Grant Hill to Dan Majerle became more proficient on the outside. Even the fabled Dominique Wilkins had to start making threes in those days. David Benoit was part of that dying breed of non-proficient outside shooting small forwards. Had he come into the league in the 70s he would have probably hung around for longer than he did in the 90s.It behooves me to recount his career arc, but according to the Unofficial David Benoit site, after being undrafted at the end of his collegiate career he went on to play in Malaga, Spain and won the ACB (the name of the league, Raul Lopez fans may be familiar with it) Rookie of the year. After that he signed with the Jazz and played hard.

He quickly impressed the Jazz brass and became our starting small forward.

Benoit doin' that thing he do.	YouTube video "I Love This Game: Are You Ready to Fly (NBA commercial)" [0:30] uploaded by onceuponatimeinnba

Benoit's best years playing for the Jazz included being part of the 1993 All-Star Weekend Dunk contest (which took play in Salt Lake City); finishing that 1992-1993 season strong by averaging 12.7 ppg and 6.5 rpg; and in 1994-1995 he had his best year leading the Jazz in 3 pointers made (in the playoffs) and averaging 10.4 ppg (48.7%/33.0%/84.1%) and 5.2 rpg. It's important to note that his three point shooting was particularly impressive for him (and up to that point, any Utah Jazz forward).

Unfortunately for him, the team, and the fans, his strong regular season outside shooting did not carry over to the post season. The Jazz were ousted in 5 games (back then the 1st round of the playoffs was best of 5, kids) by the eventual champions, the Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler led Houston Rockets. In the decisive 5th game the Rockets won 95 - 91 to on the Delta Center floor. Hakeem and Clyde, like they had for most of the series, did all the scoring for the Rockets. Hakeem had 33 and Clyde with 31, with no one else scoring more than 8. On the Jazz side Karl Malone had a mighty 35, Jeff Hornacek knocked down 4 threes on his way to 19 and Stockton chipped in with 12 points. What about David?

Well, David Benoit was a key element to this game. The Rockets were aware of his shaky shooting from deep, and left him open during a decisive sequence of the 2nd half when the Rockets were climbing back and eventually took the lead. David finished with 8 points, but shot quite poorly (3 for 9), and went 2 for 8 from deep. For a point of reference, Karl Malone went 1 for 2 from deep in that game. David shot the ball 6 more times from three than Karl did, and only made 1 more three than he did. It's easy to point to this as empirical evidence that Benoit *cost* the Jazz that game, and that series -- but there are always other factors at play. His NBA career was all downhill from there.

Italy	Rocky Mountain Review, Utah, 2000	Benoit is huge in Japan	His last jersey

Benoit's other notable blips on my selective memory radar include that one time that one of John Stockton's kids broke his arm trying to 'dunk it like Benoit' on a kiddie hoop; and of having a poor season ending exit interview with Jazz Brass one season -- which lead to him parlaying his trade in New Jersey (and later Orlando as a part of an astonishing trade that surrounded Yinka Dare for Rony Seikaly). During his career he played all over the world: Spain (Mayoral Marists in Malaga); Italy (Roseto Sharks); Israel (Maccabi Tel-Aviv); he came back to the Jazz for that 2000-2001 season for a bit; China (Shanghai Sharks alongside Yao Ming); and in Japan (Hitachi Sunrockers, Saitama Broncos). He played till he was 38 years old and was still an integral part of his teams -- especially in leagues where he could thrive as an inside player; never having become a serious outside threat. Today he remains a coach (in some capacity) with the Broncos. (or at least he did, back in 2007-2008)