khandor’s sports blog

One of the players who excelled at the recent FIBA Men’s World Championships was Linas Kleiza [SF, 6-8, 245]. 

While leading Lithuania to the Bronze Medal, he was selected to the all-tournament team; and, after playing in the Euroleague last year – for Olympiakos – is scheduled to play for the Toronto Raptors during the upcoming NBA season.

Q1. Is the way Mr. Kleiza played in these World Championships how Raptors fans should expect to see him perform … with game averages of 19 pts, 7.1 rebs and 1.4 ast … once he dons his uniform for the dinos?

Hmmm …

A1. Probably not.

The list of individual players with the task of matching-up against Mr. Kleiza during the World Championships looks something like this:

and indicates that the level of competition which he faced on a game-to-game basis was far below what he should expect see when he returns to the NBA this season, e.g. in terms of size, strength and explosive quickness, in conjunction with the ability to slash to the basket, shoot the ball from distance, play on the block, rebound and defend, at the Forward positions:

——-

At its fundamental core, NBA hoops is a game of individual match-ups and mis-matches, operating within the Team Concept, and the “games” of various specific players do not necessarily translate well – i.e. in terms of overall Offense, Defense and Rebounding – when shifting over from the environment which exists in FIBA competition.

Tags: FIBA 2010 Men's World Championships, Linas Kleiza, Toronto Raptors

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 15th, 2010 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Analytics, Basketball, FIBA, NBA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.