Seeing Enes Kanter, the Utah Jazz’ top NBA Draft pick struggle through Eurobasket, Europe’s basketball qualifier for the upcoming Summer Olympics in London, is painful.
Jazz fans just watched their team spend a No. 3 draft pick on the kid from Istanbul, Turkey via Kentucky, you know.
Hope for a bright future still appears somewhere in sight, a place between a really promising game and one you’d rather flush down a built-in toilet.
Every game for Kanter is like watching a yo-yo go up and down. One game the Turkish giant terrorizes opponents; the next he’s literally hiding.
In a matter of words, he’s playing like Memo Okur, the Jazz’ other Turkish center, and that’s not going to work for a team so desperate for a physical specimen.
Did Coach Cal lie to somebody about this 6-foot-11 inch, 262-pound Rock of Gibraltar? Because even I’m beginning to wonder if the Jazz made the right choice after watching him underperform so woefully the past few weeks.
His first round averages at Eurobasket were decent. 10 points in his first three games of the tournament, along with a good shooting percentage (67 percent) and 20 minutes played per contest were a nice way to start things off.
He had off and on games, but they were mostly on.
Numbers like 19 points and five rebounds against woeful Poland were also a nice wrap up to the first round--and a few media took notice with glowing stories about him--but those niceties evaporated after his horrendous two point, one rebound brick-fest in Turkey’s stunning win over heavy favorite Spain. Turkey finished the round with a 3-2 overall record.
In the second round, the bricks continued being heaved against France, another 10-to-15 minute night in which Kanter didn’t do much of anything other than sit on the bench. When he did get in the game, he had four points to show for it.
Things started to pick up for Enes today against Germany and superstar Dirk Nowitski. Even though he played just 19 minutes, he hit all five of his shots and scored 11 points, though his team lost.
Now with his Turkish team nearly out of a chance to play in the Olympics--unless they get a win over Serbia on Sunday and a little help--Kanter’s focus now turns back to the professional side of things.
Namely, the Utah Jazz. Fans should be ready for a real roller coaster ride this season, if and when there actually will be a season.
Right now, it’s sounding like the first action Kanter actually gets in a Jazz uniform may come next year, unless the two sides come together in the next three weeks, a highly unlikely scenario at best.
Kanter is probably staying in Europe during the lockout. It’s not a bad proposition for a player who didn’t play college hoops last year at Kentucky because he was ruled ineligible.
It may also give the youngster some much needed time to work on his shooting, which has been so up and down in Lithuania during Eurobasket that you would need a meat thermometer to determine whether he was actually into the game or not.
Piercing a hole in his arm probably won’t help Jazz fans get an indication of where this kid’s heart is, but it’s obvious that either the Turkish coach doesn’t see Kanter in his big picture--likely true due to limited minutes he’s getting in Eurobasket--or the Turkish coach doesn’t know what he has in Kanter.
Whatever is happening inside that giant head of Kanter’s, the fans hope--as does the Jazz franchise itself--that their new Turkish center brings more to the table when the NBA season finally gets underway.
Kanter has certainly shown signs of his promise at Eurobasket in what is essentially his first real basketball action in two years, and his dunk on Spanish center Marc Gasol proved he has great inside skills.
But what Jazz fans really want to see, and what the brass needs to see from Kanter and hasn’t seen at Eurobasket, is Kanter’s steadiness over a long stretch of games.
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