How Onuralp Bitim became such a great player?
The end of the season is approaching in almost all European competitions so the individual awards have started, EuroCup Second Team 2023 has been announced: J’Covan Brown, Sam Dekker, Bruno Caboclo, Tyrique Jones and an extremely interesting player who at the beginning of his career had no room to develop in a Euroleague team, Onuralp Bitim a surprise for everyone.
The player of Frutti Extra Bursaspor, made an extremely good choice when for his career he chose to part with Efes and choose Pinar in the first phase and then to join Frutti Extra Bursaspor with whom he had a dream season. If at Efes, he never really got his chances, not even in moments without stakes being preferred foreign players paid with big money, at Pinar he started to get courage and grow from game to game. In BSL 2020/2021 he had at Pinar 5.5 ppg in 15.2 minutes per game, he played 23 games that season. After that season, Frutti Extra Bursaspor had their eye on him and they saw what others missed, that he has superstar potential. In his first season with Bursaspor, he had 12.1 ppg in the Eurocup and 14.8 ppg in the BSL, playing an average of 28 minutes. Probably Bursaspor were already satisfied with his performance but this season is phenomenal, in Eurocup he has 18.1 ppg, 3.8 reb, 3.2 ast and in BSL 18.7 ppg, 4.9 reb, 3.7 ast some really unreal numbers for a player of only 24 years old. He was the only player this season in Eurocup who average more than 16.0 points, 3.0 rebounds and 3.0 assists, and in some games, he was truly magical: 26 points against U-BT in the 6th round, 24 points the next round against Venice and 23 points in the return games against both teams. In the Eightfinals game against Gran Canaria, he scored 22 of his team’s 66 points.
The young player is seen as a very good all-around athlete, versatile in creating offense, and has the ability to penetrate to the basket finishing with a variety of shots. His biggest minus is that he seems to be a bit of a Harden, he likes to hold onto the ball too much, shoot from many difficult positions and still lacks shot selection. If he can solve his problems with choosing when to shoot the basket and if he learns to put his teammates in value I am sure he can take the next step and become a starter in any Euroleague team.
Valentin Petruta
Photo credit: EuroCup
