Turning overseas stars into NBA stars can be tricky
The player who might best represent the 76ers' boldest break from their past is having himself a hell of a run, no matter how few people might be noticing it now.
The player who might best represent the 76ers' boldest break from their past is having himself a hell of a run, no matter how few people might be noticing it now.
Last week, the International Basketball Federation named Dario Saric its European Young Player of the Year, honoring him with the award for the second time, providing another measure of validation to the Sixers' decision to trade for Saric's rights during last year's NBA draft and allow him to develop with Anadolu Efes Istanbul in Turkey.
If there's skepticism over the Sixers' willingness to wait two years or more for Saric, it's understandable given the team's current condition and the franchise's history with international players. They've never drafted one who has made a meaningful contribution for them - their overseas scouting just another muscle of their basketball organization that atrophied over time and that general manager Sam Hinkie and coach Brett Brown have to strengthen.
Just understand: The Sixers aren't the only ones who believe Saric can be a player who eventually underpins a team's growth to greatness. A Western Conference executive, for instance, said Monday that his team was prepared to make Saric its first-round pick in 2013 before Saric withdrew his name from that year's draft.
"He can play," said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The reason he'll be successful is that he plays hard, and he competes, and he'll battle. Every night he goes on the floor, he gives it his all."
He's also 20 years old and likely won't join the Sixers until he's at least 22, which if nothing else separates him from maybe the most infamous draft pick in NBA history. On Wednesday, the Sixers play the Detroit Pistons, who had acquired the No. 2 pick in the 2003 draft in a trade and had an opportunity to extend what would be a seven-year stretch of Eastern Conference dominance.
LeBron James had gone to the Cleveland Cavaliers with the first pick, leaving Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh there for the Pistons' taking. But Detroit instead drafted Serbian sensation Darko Milicic, an 18-year-kid who had to adjust to a new country and culture and couldn't crack a lineup that included Chauncey Billups, Richard Hamilton, Ben Wallace, and Rasheed Wallace.
While the Pistons won a championship in 2004 and advanced to at least the conference finals each of the following three seasons, Milicic was buried on the bench until they traded him to Orlando in 2006. Detroit is 17-28 this season and hasn't finished with a winning record since 2008, and for all of Hinkie's insistence that a single missed pick doesn't have to cripple a franchise for years to come, it's possible that the Pistons wouldn't have drifted into irrelevance had they drafted a player with more staying power than Milicic.
"The hardest thing for teams to understand is that when you bring a guy over from Europe, you've got to play him," the Western Conference executive said. "You've got to be patient. The best way to put it is, any time a guy does come into the NBA, you've got to give it a year of adjustment. He's learning where to eat in America, where to drive, where to practice. It's a whole different experience."
The Sixers don't want to make the same mistake. Their hands are tied with Saric for the time being, of course, because of his contract with Anadolu Efes, so they're content to let him mature across the ocean.
Meanwhile, they've shoehorned Turkish power forward Furkan Aldemir into the lineup for 18 games and minimal minutes since signing him in mid-December. Aldemir is 23 years old, 6-foot-9 and 223 pounds, and not in optimal basketball shape.
But with their rebuilding project still in its early stages and with every NBA franchise soon to be flush with income from the league's recent TV deal with ESPN and Turner, the Sixers have time and money available to them to learn how good Aldemir can be.
"He has to figure out what the heck my accent is and what I'm saying a little bit better at times, and the team has to understand who they're playing with," said Brown, who lived and coached in Australia for 17 years and spent 12 years with the San Antonio Spurs, arguably the league's standard-bearers for developing international players. "He's a world-class screener. That man can set a screen. And he's actually a world-class roller, and once he gets it, he's like [Spurs forward Tiago] Splitter. He can pass and quarterback a gym from that half-roll, that window pass. So we need to feature him there. And then go rebound all day long, big fella.
"When he does those things and he starts taking care of his body and gets stronger - and he's got so much growth physically - then he's going to play on an NBA court better than he currently does."
There were a record 101 international players on NBA rosters when this season began, and for years the Sixers had failed to take any advantage of that rising tide. It was long past time for them to recognize the reality of basketball's place as a global game.
So they'll wait for Furkan Aldemir over here and Dario Saric over there, and like everything else about their plan to rebuild, their attempt to mine foreign lands for talent will require patience and comes with no guarantees.
Just, finally, a little bit of hope.