The reality of the naturalized players: Austria and Hungary
Yesterday rounds of FIBA WORLD CUP and FIBA EUROBASKET brought to the forefront the issue of the naturalized players and their efficiency for the national team.
Because it is now a trend to naturalize American players in search of a new homeland and, of course, in search of the identity that gives them the opportunity to play as Europeans, many countries tried to improve their roster with them. Especially weak basketball countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Albania, Armenia, Austria etc. who don’t grow good local players and then they have lack of it for the National team. As a parenthesis, I don’t see naturalized Americans in Lithuania, Croatia or Serbia roster.
But I think that many countries are blind when they chose the American because sometimes he is a mediocre guy and his performance is a low one. It seems that those countries just pick up some American player just to have one, they don’t search for a quality one.
Let’s have a look at Austria and Hungary. Yesterday, Austrian naturalized Sylven Landesberg, former top Euroleague player for Maccabi Tel-Aviv made history in the Eurobasket Pre-qualifiers. At the half-time, he scored already 40 points against Great Britain. He finished the game with 49 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists for an efficiency rate of 48!
On the other side, we have the case of Hungarian naturalized Darrin Govens, who made a long trip from his Russian club Nizhny Novgorod to help his national team against Croatia with 3 points, 1 rebound and 1 assist for 3 index rating! This is ridiculous! Any young Hungarian would have this numbers in 20 minutes spent on the court! For this “performance”, the teams don’t need to naturalize Americans!
Without Landesberg, Austria would definitely be destroyed by Great Britain. With Landesberg instead of Govens, Hungary could top Croatia. So, next time, when you naturalize players open your eyes!
Graţian Cormoş, info@brainbasketball.net
