Wolves in FIBA

[mjs34]

Ricky is a very good FT shooter, which means he has the capability to improve through repetition. Anyone using his length of career as a pro is reaching. If anything, his playing pro at such a young age, stunted his growth as a player. He wasn't developed, and only asked to do things he was already good at, which was bringing the ball up the floor and standing in the corner on offense. You don't get better that way.

Being able to dominate guys your own age builds confidence, and allows a player to grow. Ricky has had very little of that in his BB career. What worries me with Ricky, is he truly loves playing BB, and doesn't seem to care about stats at all. While that can be good for the team, I am not so sure that is good for his game.

Most experts downgraded Shabazz when they learned he was a year older. Ask yourself why that was, and then realize that Ricky was playing against Men when he was 14 or 15.

[Phenom]

Ricky is a very good FT shooter, which means he has the capability to improve through repetition. Anyone using his length of career as a pro is reaching. If anything, his playing pro at such a young age, stunted his growth as a player. He wasn't developed, and only asked to do things he was already good at, which was bringing the ball up the floor and standing in the corner on offense. You don't get better that way.

Being able to dominate guys your own age builds confidence, and allows a player to grow. Ricky has had very little of that in his BB career. What worries me with Ricky, is he truly loves playing BB, and doesn't seem to care about stats at all. While that can be good for the team, I am not so sure that is good for his game.

Most experts downgraded Shabazz when they learned he was a year older. Ask yourself why that was, and then realize that Ricky was playing against Men when he was 14 or 15.

Excellent point sjm.

[bleedspeed]

Speaking of FIBA. Anyone else improving there stock more then Faried?

[kekgeek]

JJ went off today for 30, but he also had 5 TO to only 2 assists

[Hicks123 [enjin:6700838]]

Ricky is a very good FT shooter, which means he has the capability to improve through repetition. Anyone using his length of career as a pro is reaching. If anything, his playing pro at such a young age, stunted his growth as a player. He wasn't developed, and only asked to do things he was already good at, which was bringing the ball up the floor and standing in the corner on offense. You don't get better that way.

Being able to dominate guys your own age builds confidence, and allows a player to grow. Ricky has had very little of that in his BB career. What worries me with Ricky, is he truly loves playing BB, and doesn't seem to care about stats at all. While that can be good for the team, I am not so sure that is good for his game.

Most experts downgraded Shabazz when they learned he was a year older. Ask yourself why that was, and then realize that Ricky was playing against Men when he was 14 or 15.

Excellent point sjm.

I have a feeling we will be hearing this arguement for another 3-4 years, maybe with some additions to language barrier or something.

Not sure I agree with the developmental piece above....or at least, it works 2 ways. When guys play and dominate at a certain level, it actually often times plays into why a player doesn't fully develop as well. Take your typical High School athlete as a great example. Many of each yearly HS basketball players that dominate their conferences get by on sheer athleticism. This is the reason so many guys come into college with little more than an ability to run and dunk. The art of shooting is not necessary for many of these kids, thus they don't spend the time, thus they don't develop the skill. We see this more times than not with these super young prospects. I would also agree that "playing up" can stunt someone's growth as they probably don't get the appropriate playing time to develop everything needed either. That being said, I think the arguement that this hurt Ricky doesn't hold water. He is a multi-faceted player that's only huge hole is shooting...and taking contact inside. His shooting woes have nothing to do with him playing professionally at a young age. In fact, I would argue that he most likely has been around very skilled shooting coaches his whole young life. Are you telling me that at no point, he has worked with professional coaches to improve his shooting? My guess is that he has had plenty of lessons, and tutors, and coaches that have spent the necessary time to improve this skill. Fact is, some guys just can't shoot, despite their talent to do other things. And the FT shooting % arguement brought up often is flawed as well. There are lot's of guys that could shoot FT very well, but stink as shooters, and there are cases where guys can shoot from the floor well and stink at FT (I remember Nick Anderson had this issue). Not sure there is a correlation between a guy that shoots FT having a huge advantage as an overall shooter.

At this point in his career, or looking at his age despite his career as a professional, I would guess that it goes against historical averages to expect Ricky to improve his shooting a whole bunch. Maybe he can get to 40%? That is where I am hopeful he lands.

[m4gor [enjin:6667447]]

Ricky is a very good FT shooter, which means he has the capability to improve through repetition. Anyone using his length of career as a pro is reaching. If anything, his playing pro at such a young age, stunted his growth as a player. He wasn't developed, and only asked to do things he was already good at, which was bringing the ball up the floor and standing in the corner on offense. You don't get better that way.

Being able to dominate guys your own age builds confidence, and allows a player to grow. Ricky has had very little of that in his BB career. What worries me with Ricky, is he truly loves playing BB, and doesn't seem to care about stats at all. While that can be good for the team, I am not so sure that is good for his game.

Most experts downgraded Shabazz when they learned he was a year older. Ask yourself why that was, and then realize that Ricky was playing against Men when he was 14 or 15.

you know why he played vs men? it was because of this:

MVP of the FIBA Europe Under-16 Championship: he averaged 22.3 points, 12.8 rebounds, 7.1 assists, 6.5 steals. In the final, accumulated 51 points, 24 rebounds, 12 assists and 7 steals.

He was not developed badly, actually it was an all Spain topic how to develope him the best i would say.

Joventud where he started is decent team and Barcelona is first class organization with budget like NBA team and best coaches on the continent, they definitely wouldnt gimp players developement. In Europe we have different system and it might happen that 16-17 kids play among grown man. It actually helps them in developement because in junior category there is not enough competition for them. Professional clubs in here are developing talents born around a town and it is the best thing for young talent to make A team of the best team possible, because thats where the money is and where good coaches are.

[mjs34]

Ricky is a very good FT shooter, which means he has the capability to improve through repetition. Anyone using his length of career as a pro is reaching. If anything, his playing pro at such a young age, stunted his growth as a player. He wasn't developed, and only asked to do things he was already good at, which was bringing the ball up the floor and standing in the corner on offense. You don't get better that way.

Being able to dominate guys your own age builds confidence, and allows a player to grow. Ricky has had very little of that in his BB career. What worries me with Ricky, is he truly loves playing BB, and doesn't seem to care about stats at all. While that can be good for the team, I am not so sure that is good for his game.

Most experts downgraded Shabazz when they learned he was a year older. Ask yourself why that was, and then realize that Ricky was playing against Men when he was 14 or 15.

you know why he played vs men? it was because of this:

MVP of the FIBA Europe Under-16 Championship: he averaged 22.3 points, 12.8 rebounds, 7.1 assists, 6.5 steals. In the final, accumulated 51 points, 24 rebounds, 12 assists and 7 steals.

He was not developed badly, actually it was an all Spain topic how to develope him the best i would say.

Joventud where he started is decent team and Barcelona is first class organization with budget like NBA team and best coaches on the continent, they definitely wouldnt gimp players developement. In Europe we have different system and it might happen that 16-17 kids play among grown man. It actually helps them in developement because in junior category there is not enough competition for them. Professional clubs in here are developing talents born around a town and it is the best thing for young talent to make A team of the best team possible, because thats where the money is and where good coaches are.

And yet nobody worked on his mechanics! Coaching can't have been too good.

I watched a lot of Ricky over seas and they wasted his talent by standing him in the corner. He was never a good 3pt shooter, but had excellent passing skills and floor vision, and they preferred to give the ball to JCN and let him play isolation.

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

I didn't see the Spain/Serbia game, but it was good to see the two Wolves (Rubio and Bjelica) lead their respective teams in efficiency (a Euro stat I don't understand) with 20. Ricky had 12 points, 4 rebounds, 6 assists and 7 steals in only 22 minutes. Unfortunately he also had 7 turnovers, but it is nice to see him scoring along with facilitating and playing defense.

[foye2smith [enjin:6593248]]

Apparently Ricky got a little http://https://vine.co/v/OuviEDbiWOQfiesty today. Did we have anyone get mixed up last season? I can only think of Danny Granger and Love getting heated or Stiemsma getting punked once a week and those were at least 2 seasons ago if not more.

[BizarroJerry [enjin:6592520]]

It was also refreshing to see Rubio and Dieng tweeting each other during the tournament. I hate Twitter more than anyone, but I only use it to check for Wolves news.