NBA Draft Roundup, May 11

• Jeremy Tyler: A European Recruitment Begins

While visiting the beautiful city of Rome, on a mission to watch Brandon Jennings play his final Italian league game, we read with great interest the New York Times article by Pete Thamel regarding Sonny Vaccaro’s next European project, Jeremy Tyler.

Sonny Vaccaro, who is advising Tyler, will fly to Athens on Sunday for meetings with Greece’s top basketball teams, Olympiacos and Panathinaikos.

Vaccaro said the talks would be the first formal discussions about where Tyler would play, but interest remains from clubs in Italy, Spain and Israel. It had been thought that Tyler would play in Spain, but Greece has become a top option…

…Vaccaro said that he expected a deal with a club by the middle of June and that it was possible Tyler could go to Europe to audition for teams. He said the monetary figure would likely be “mid six figures.”

We’ll have a full article up on Brandon Jennings once we finish watching him practice today and tomorrow. Since Rome managed to clinch the 2nd seed in the Italian league playoffs with a win over Avellino on Thursday, we actually had a chance to watch Brandon receive the second most minutes he’s seen all season long, in a meaningless game as far as his team is concerned, in which he nonetheless looked fantastic. What’s important to note is that Jennings was just coming off not logging a single minute in arguably the most important game of his team’s season, showing you exactly where he stands in the pecking order of this squad. The NBA teams who waited until the Italian playoffs to try and evaluate him will likely be very disappointed.

That’s not a knock on Jennings at all, as we sincerely believe that no 18-year old American in the world would be able to do much better, with the exception of possibly Lebron James or Kobe Bryant at the same age.

The point here is that he was sent to a situation that did not suit a prospect as his stage of development at all, alongside a pair of guards in Sani Becirovic and Ibrahim Jaaber that do not compliment his strengths and weaknesses in the least bit, and have made it virtually impossible for him to have the ball in his hands and develop his point guard skills. To Jennings’ credit, he handled the situation like a true professional, not being involved in a single incident all season long, accepting his fate with the utmost maturity, and doing exactly what was asked of him, which really speaks volumes about his character. In most cases, the player would not have made it through the season, which would have been a disaster both from a development standpoint and for his own draft stock.

It now appears that Vaccaro is making the same exact mistake, only much worse, as you probably couldn’t find two worse less attractive situations in all of Europe for a 17-year old American big man like Jeremy Tyler than Olympiacos or Panathinaikos.

While he would obviously be paid a ton of money, it’s unlikely that he would be able to see even a single minute of meaningful playing time, as he’s nowhere near physically or emotionally mature enough to compete at this level. The coaches at the helm of these teams can’t waste even a single possession for development purposes, and are not in the least bit interested showing an American teenager the ropes of professional basketball, only to lose him to the NBA when he finally starts getting close to being able to contribute something.

Two extremely mature, professional and well-established NBA rotation players in Josh Childress and Jannero Pargo were unable to live up to expectations this season with Olympiacos—so how would Jeremy Tyler fare there? Just the thought is downright preposterous.

The role of agents placing American players in European basketball (essentially what Vaccaro is functioning as) is far more complicated here than it is in the NBA—where teams pick their own players after pinpointing their weaknesses, scouting the market and identifying which free agents to go after. European teams do almost no meaningful scouting and are often rebuilt from top to bottom each and every year, which leads an unbelievable amount of mistakes. Agents in Europe can rarely just take the offer from the highest bidder when trying to find the optimal place for their client to play—there is far more than that.

Rome clearly was taking a shot in the dark by signing Jennings, a decision more oriented around marketing and publicity than it was about actual basketball. A player like Tyler—who’s main weakness have always revolved around his poor mental toughness, work ethic and overall weak intangibles—needs to be handled with a lot more care. If things don’t work out for Tyler with one of these ultra-rich clubs, they’ll gladly toss him to the side and write if off as a business expense that provided them with plenty of global exposure. For Tyler, though, the damage will be much greater.

We’ll see if Vaccaro is just trying to drum up interest from other clubs by starting with the two richest teams in European basketball, but for Tyler’s sake, we hope that he does his research and finds a team at the right level that understands the unique issues he’s facing and is willing to develop him at the correct pace—rather than just chasing the money. Otherwise, Tyler will be back in the States staring the D-League in the face, before he even knows what hit him.

• Jonas Jerebko Interview / Evaluation

Before we traveled to Rome, we had a chance to visit with Swedish small forward and projected second round pick Jonas Jerebko, both playing and practicing with his team Angelico Biella in the Italian first division. Jerebko’s team knocked off Armani Jeans Milano in impressive fashion on primetime TV in their sparkling, beautiful new gym, and their starting 3-man had a typical game by his standards.

Not a whole lot has changed with Jerebko since the last time we evaluated him in late January—many of his strengths and weakness remain the same. It is impressive to see his physical profile in person and notice how much he’s worked on his body—he’s gone from a scrawny 192 pounds when he first arrived here to a chiseled 225.

In the scrimmage in particular he did a great job showing how much he can impact the game with his terrific length and activity level. He gets his hands on pretty much everything in his area, coming up with tons of deflections, steals and offensive and defensive rebounds, indeed ranking amongst the top players in the league in those categories at his position.

Offensively, he looked solid knocking down shots with his feet set, but still isn’t much of a threat on this end of the court, as his skill-level remains average at best. He lacks aggressiveness on this end of the floor, not showing much confidence in his ball-handling skills, and passing up opportunities to attack his matchup, which helps explain why he almost never gets to the free throw line.

This is also part of the reason he’s such a valuable role-player, though, as he understands his role perfectly, rarely commits mistakes, and is very comfortable doing the little things for his team. The maturity and unselfishness he shows at his age is very impressive.

Defensively, Jerebko knows how to use his terrific size, length and activity level to his advantage, and didn’t seem to have much of a problem staying in front of a very aggressive 6-4 shooting guard in David Hawkins, one of the best scorers in the Italian league. His potential on this end of the floor is considerable.

Before the game, we had a chance to sit down with Jerebko and pick his brain on a couple of issues, which you can see here:



As mentioned in the video, Jerebko will be competing at the Eurocamp in Treviso, where he may be able to show a more well-rounded offensive game than he can at Biella.