By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Zeljko Obradovic and Gregg Popovich are good friends and the basketball their teams produce remains representative of the top level in the EuroLeague and the NBA respectively. And while the Popovich-era Spurs are considered the most “European” team of the NBA, the real thing is more enjoyable for Carlos Delfino.
The Argentinian forward who has played both in Europe and the NBA explained in an interview with Argentinian journalist Carlos Altamirano why he prefers the European game.
“It is very difficult for me to finish watching a whole NBA game,” said Carlos Delfino. “It has to be the Playoffs. Other than that, it seems to be pretty long, people just running from one side to the other, and often meaningless. I always said it, even when I was playing there: for me, the purest basket is the national team basket, that of the Olympics. A world cup. A Euroleague playoff”.
Carlos Delfino y la NBA. Categórico.
“Es muy difícil que mire un partido entero de la NBA. Disfruto más a un equipo de Obradovic que de Popovich”. pic.twitter.com/kRU8MSoSOw
— Carlos Altamirano (@altamirano45) July 21, 2020
Delfino who returns to action this year for Pesaro in Italy, further elaborates: “I like watching an Obradovic team much more than a Popovich team. I always said so. Simply because European basketball seems to me like watching chess. The NBA is much more a show. I lived there, I love it, I loved it, it’s a dream, that’s true, but the athletic part kills it. The problems of the game are solved from the athletic foundation, and not from the individual skills. You save yourself by jumping higher, not by inventing a movement to take off or creating space with a partner playing pick and roll. If the advantage is athletic, we become athletes, and not basketball players”.