Dogus Balbay

[...] Efes also return holdovers Dogus Balbay (defensive specialist guard who almost never takes a turn on the ball) and Birkan Batuk (a once promising versatile young off-guard scorer who has become more and more of a shooting specialist with each passing year), to provide added quota-meeting guard depth. There are no big-minute Turkish players in the rotation, but Efes will be needing bench contributions from all. Overly relying on imports has not worked for years now. [...]

Dogus Balbay - The Dogus excelled as a defender in college, and yet he also lived up to the rules of such matters - for whatever reason, good collegiate defenders tend to be bad shooters. And few were worse than Dogus, who hit precisely two jumpshots as a senior, despite being a regular starter. [That's jumpshots from anywhere, not just threes. He hit 0 threes last year, and hit only 2 in his three year Longhorns career.] Balbay is big and athletic for a point guard, but not sufficiently big and athletic to the point where he can be considered big and athletic by NBA standards. He is big and athletic to defend anywhere else, though, and even if he is more of a ball-mover than a creator, he suffices as a point guard as well. A return to Turkey looks inevitable, because it seems unlikely that even Mark Bartelstein can get him drafted.