– Sofoklis Schortsanitis Big Sofo has supposedly lost almost 150 pounds. This is good. The number is presumably exaggerated a bit, but whatever the amount he’s lost really is, it’s still good that he’s lost it. He needed to. Last year, he was simply too fat play; allegedly nearer to 500lbs than 400, and seemingly trying his best to undermine the team that continues to persist with him perhaps long after they shouldn’t, Sofo appeared in only 95 minutes all season, and fouled once in every four of them. How a man can get as big as he did is hard to fathom, and how a professional athlete (at least ostensibly) can get that big is simply mind-blowing. But it happened. Sofo has always had a huge frame, yet with all that fat on him, he was heeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEYYOOOOOOOOGE. You could feel your head being drawn closer to the screen, such was his gravitational pull. He was the biggest basketball player I have ever seen. And it was reflected in his play. This year, however, Sofoklis has turned up to play. Perhaps motivated by the impending expiration of his contract, Sofoklis has lost much weight and is an unstoppable force in the Greek league. He plays only 13.3 minutes in Greek league play, partly because Olympiacos keep winning in blowouts, partly because his stamina still isn’t great, partly because he offers so little defensively other than the foul, and partly of Olympiacos’s surfeit of big men. (When you have all of Sofo, Ioannis Bourousis, Nikola Vujcic, Linas Kleiza, Andreas Glyniadakis and Loukas Mavrokefalidis, you might as well use them). Yet in that short space of time, Sofo averages a whopping 9.4 points per game, shooting 69% from the field. He is unstoppably strong in the paint; there’s no else that big […]
– Michael Bramos: Bramos is a Greek wing who recently finished his senior season at the University of Miami, Ohio. (It was news to me that there were two Miami’s. Seems unnecessary.) On offence, he’s largely an outside shooter since he does not much dribble in traffic, but he’s not a great shooter, shooting 40% from the field and 36% from the three-point line in his senior season. He’s pretty athletic and very strong for an off-guard (standing 6’5 and 221lbs, which is pretty heavy for a man that height), and he also has a hell of a wingspan that gets about the place on defense. These reasons and more are why Europe is his inevitable destiny; that and the door-opening Greek passport, obviously. – Will Bynum: Last year was a strange one for Will Bynum. Michael Curry played him and played him and played him and played him for three months, and he struggled. Then, in March, Bynum somehow broke out. He became able to get to the rim at will, and drained 21-footers like he’d never been able to do prior. Eventually, he became a key contributor for the Pistons, had a 32-point 7-assist game versus Charlotte, and averaged nearly 12 points per game for Detroit in the playoffs. And now Pistons fans are grateful that Bynum’s going to be on their roster and earning the minimum salary next year. – Austin Daye: Detroit bailed out Daye’s decision to declare too early by picking him 15th overall this year, a pick with which I am not overly fond. They clearly see more in this athletic jump shooting specialist than I do. (This is a position that, in the long run, I am willing to modify. I admit that I didn’t see a lot of Daye in […]
