For Turkish club Fenerbahce. Team will also have Nemanja Bjelica, Carsen Edwards, and Marko Guduric. Calathes has spent the past two years with Barcelona and Wilbekin spent the past four years with Tel Aviv.
That's really cool! I wonder if they'll both be battling for the starting point guard spot, or if one (most likely Wilbekin) would move to shooting guard.
I'd imagine they'll both start with Carsen Edwards coming off the bench. Wilbekin is a combo guard these days.
Willby was a good defender except for the really quick guys. Nick not so much. But both were awesome on the offensive end especially Nick. He was special. Those two guys in the same starting backcourt has got to be a team that plans on outscoring their opponents. But maybe they don't both start.
Got to love global sports. Nick the Greek and an ex-Tel Aviv player suiting up for a team from the Ottoman Empire
I am pretty sure that Nick has become a very good defender. He actually was really solid on defense during his short NBA stint.
Ironically enough Nick became a very well-respected defender as a pro and his biggest limitation is he can't shoot from pro distance.
He was first team all defense one year and euroleage defensive player of the year in the greek league another.
I think Scottie was an excellent defender without caveats. There are some guys that nobody is stopping consistently, and you just try to limit the damage. But Scottie was as good of a defender as they come. Moves his feet, doesn’t reach, doesn’t give up once he’s beat, and doesn’t commit silly fouls. There are guys like Patrick Beverley that are good defenders, but I don’t respect it as much because they get away with stuff due to reputation. Pat Bev fouls, grabs, and reaches in on damn near every play, but they allow it. Professional cheating. I hate when guys play like that. Scottie, in contrast, plays CLEAN fundamental defense.
Scottie was a lot like Lee Humphrey on defense. Active feet, head up, locked in, no silly reaching. And tireless.
I always thought the criticisms of Nick's quickness and defense were way overblown by Gator fans. My recollection is that he was often assigned to guard the opponent's best perimeter offensive player. Donovan getting on Nick (and benching him during that one game) for playing too much hero ball near the end of his sophomore season (and I think kind of screwing up Nick's game for the rest of that season) is about the only criticism I ever had of Donovan. That team needed hero ball from Nick even if he overdid it at times. That's a difficult role to fill without sometimes overdoing it.
Yeah, out of necessity we asked a lot more of Calathes on defense than we ideally would have. We just didn't have a lot of options on the perimeter, and Calathes at least had size, so you had situations where we needed him to guard Jodie Meeks on the last possession of the game. It tended to highlight and exacerbate his limitations. He certainly wasn't unplayably bad, and on a better and more talented team he probably wouldn't have been all that noticeable.
On offense Nick had nowhere near the flash of JWill, but he was really effective. On D it was all basketball IQ. He just knew how the play would develop.
Fwiw here's a preseason clip of Wilbekin defending like he'll against former teammate/Buck Elijah Bryant
First Euroleague game is today -- they are both in the starting five. There was a pic of them together doing the chop but I was having a hard time getting pics to work.
