Friday 24 April 2020 17:40, UK
BBL legend and Sky Sports NBA analyst Mike Tuck discusses his favourite European players and draws comparisons between current star Luka Doncic and 1990s legend Drazen Petrovic.
I was so impressed by how developed Luka Doncic already was when he came into the NBA in the 2018 Draft. He was probably the most hyped European player to come into the league for a long time, if not ever.
Doncic has enjoyed rapid success in less than two seasons in the NBA and I think that speaks to the value of academy systems - especially those in Europe - and the development players get there as opposed to the traditional North American system. Doncic signed with Real Madrid when he was 15 and made this senior team debut for them at 16 so he obviously turned some heads pretty quickly. Making a senior debut at that age is incredible
Doncic has shown he is an extremely hard-working guy as well as being extremely gifted. His basketball IQ is really high and he has a really good feel for the game. Because of the clout Doncic bought with him to the NBA - he won the EuroLeague title with Real Madrid and was MVP too - he came into the league full of confidence.
To me, the only other European player to come into the NBA with that degree of confidence was Drazen Petrovic. He was one of those guys who had the 'killer' mentality that cannot be taught. Doncic is not quite as aggressive as Petrovic was, but that on-court confidence is something they share.
Unlike Doncic, Petrovic did not make an immediate impact when he came to the NBA in 1989. It was a different era, well before lots of European players started to come over to the States. He was playing behind Clyde Drexler in Portland for his first few seasons and we did not see the real 'Petro' until he got to the New Jersey Nets in 1991. That's when he made everyone pay attention.
Petrovic had been a youth sensation in Europe. He was leading scorer on Yugoslavia's FIBA World Cup-winning team in 1990. He was an absolute 'gym rat'. He was light years ahead in terms of his style of play: a very high-tempo, high-energy player; someone who would pull up from anywhere, had really deep range and was extremely confident. He once scored 112 points in a Yugoslavian league game!
If you have not seen the 30 for 30 film Once Brothers, about Petrovic and Vlade Divac, give it a look. It's one of my favourite basketball documentaries.
It's such a shame Petrovic passed away so young. We were just skimming the surface of what he could have achieved. He had had big games against Michael Jordan, much like how we have seen Doncic go head to head with LeBron James this season.
Petrovic was not going to back down against anybody. That was so rare back then. Most of the European guys in the NBA were quiet, Petrovic was in your face.
Giannis is the best European player in the league currently and most proven. He is one of the best - possibly even the outright best - player in the league, period. Getting to watch him play every night has been incredible. There are a lot of levels to his game and he is constantly improving.
Every aspect of his game is getting better and once he finds that range on his jump shot and starts stepping into open or contested shots, it's going to be really scary.
Antetokoumpo's size and strength, combined with his speed, make him an absolute nightmare for opponents on the defensive end. He is so versatile. He's is 6ft 11in but he can guard any position.
Antetokoumpo winning the 2018-19 MVP was part of a clean sweep of the end of season awards by international players. That is something I never thought I would see in the NBA when I was growing up. It goes to show the impact that the 1980s and 1990s NBA had one the future generations of international NBA players and the development of the game across the world.
We had an influx of European players come into the NBA in the early 2000s and with the technology boom and access to better drills and better coaching, with more information being passed around, now young players in Europe are developing just as fast, if not faster, than those in North America.
Guys like Petrovic and Divac were a little bit before my time, but Dirk Nowitzki came into his prime when I was at university at Loyola in the States. For now - and we will have to wait and see where Giannis and Luka end up - Dirk is the best player to come out of Europe.
Nowitzki was just legendary. He transformed the NBA game. He was not that typical European big man coaches just stuck down in the paint.
He was the guy who could stretch the floor, shoot it and come through in pressure situations. He was the go-to guy for the Dallas Mavericks. Playing 20 years in the league, all for one team, bringing them their sole NBA championship, he wrote a lot of Mavericks folklore.
To go along with that, he introduced the iconic one-legged fadeaway jump shot. Everybody has that in their arsenal now - I, along with everyone else, started 'doing the Dirk'.
How often do I hit them? I'm not bad. It's one of my go-to moves if I am backing a guy down in the post. It's an unblockable shot, you can get it off at any point in time pretty much from anywhere on the court.
If Divac and Petrovic opened the door to guys like Dirk coming into the NBA and making a huge impact, Nowitzki's success opened the door for guys like Doncic, Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic as franchise stars.
I used to love Kukoc when he was on the Bulls. He was the 'Croatian Sensation' - 6ft 10in, a big body, but really skilled. He could shoot it, pass well and had a really good feel for the game. He was a lefty, too. Left-handed bigs are often more tricky to guard. And he won Sixth Man of the Year in the Bulls' 72-win season in 1995-96.
Kukoc was a fearless player. He came up in the 1980s Yugoslavian system with Divac and Petrovic. He was a former EuroLeague champion and FIBA World Championship MVP.
He was not scared, even coming into a daunting, intimidating environment with the 1990s Chicago Bulls (not least because Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen had made a point of dominating him in a USA-Croatia game at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona).
But Kukoc was a tough player in his own right. He was able to overcome that and he fit in on that Bulls roster so well. He filled in the gaps really nicely and was a great player on that Chicago team.
