By Panos Katsiroumpas/ info@eurohoops.net
Now the team starts its planning almost from scratch and it’s worth wondering what they are going to present this year. Two years ago, acquiring Goudelock might have been the biggest news in European basketball, but now things are a bit different. After one year in Maccabi, where his performance was not especially satisfying, he’s getting ready to travel to the fashion capital and Olimpia Milan, where he will be playing next season.
His numbers, especially in scoring, may have been excellent, but at no point could he improve the team’s quality and performance. In Milan, he will try to summon the two amazing seasons he had in Kazan and in Istanbul. The Italian team is essentially looking for the player on whom they will rely and who will remind them of Langford in the 2013-2014 season, when Milan got one step from the Final Four and in the end got knocked out by Maccabi, the team that was subsequently crowned European Champions in the big city of the Italian north.
Who he is
Andrew Goudelock was born in 1988 and is a purebred scorer. He played college basketball for four years in a relatively small university, Charleston. Even though the college’s reputation was not great, the player was drafted mostly thanks to his amazing performance in scoring and the four years of his college career. The team that selected him with the number 46 pick were the Los Angeles Lakers. But, in essence, he never got the opportunity he wanted in the magical world of the NBA, as he spent two years playing for D-League teams.
After he realized that the NBA was probably a distant dream, he decided to migrate to faraway Kazan and Unics. That’s where he had the best year of his career, leading the Russian team to the final of the Eurocup, where they lost to Valencia. The American cashed in his performances with a transfer to Fenerbahce, and reached the Final Four in Madrid, where his team lost to the home team and subsequent trophy winners, Real Madrid. And right when everyone was expecting him to establish himself in Europe, he decided to leave and go to China for a year, before returning to join Maccabi, with whom he had a very mediocre year overall.
Player’s profile
Those of us who have followed this player closely know what we expect to see from him. He’s an excellent scorer, he can get the ball in the hoop in dozens of ways, and it’s very difficult to deal with him through a pure one-on-one marking.
He’s as threatening as a shooter as he is with the ball on the floor. On a good day, he can truly demolish any defensive plan, something we saw him do both in Kazan as well as in Fenerbahce.
The truth is that he’s one of the most gifted scorers in European basketball, and Olimpia’s logic in trying to find in him the new Langford has a basis. The question is how the player is going to respond in a situation like this, and how his teammates as well as the team in general can be improved through his own performance.
Goudelock could not do this in Tel Aviv, since in most games he got lost in his own selfish play and in the team’s general lack of planning. This could also be seen clearly from the numerous changes of coaches throughout the season.
Talent is by no means lacking, but what’s needed is a team with better planning and, from the player, more altruism and team play. In defense, he suffers from the standard syndromes of lack of concentration that most talented scorers coming from the other side of the Atlantic have. He doesn’t try hard enough, while many times he gets lost in turns or movements in open spaces.
This was possibly one of the reasons that led to his departure from Fenerbahce. In any case, the acquisition of Goudelock is a risk, which, if it pays off, will give the Italian team a huge boost, while, if it doesn’t, they will probably present mediocre basketball, like it happened last season.
The kind of teammates he’s going to have on his side, as well as the direction from the coaching staff, are going to be as important. The extent to which they will tame and shape the player’s game to levels that will benefit the team, is the biggest bet.