By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
With Giannis Antetokounmpo being the youngest international NBA All Star starter, there’s no one in the world who doesn’t see the “Greek Freak” as a candidate to be the best player of the world in the not so far future.
Still, things were quite different back at the start of 2015, when Giannis finished second in the vote for the FIBA Europe young men’s player of the year award.
As one of his two Greek agents, Giorgos Dimitropoulos stressed via twitter
Btw, two years ago we all enjoyed FIBA “experts” vote for best european player U22, ranking an active NBA player 2nd behind a EUL one…-:)
— GeorgiosDimitropulos (@DimitropulosOCT) 20 Ιανουαρίου 2017
Yes, it was just two years ago when despite being voted young player of the year by the fans, the experts in the voting pushed Giannis under Dario Saric. I was one of those experts who voted then – I voted for Giannis but the fact that he was Greek like me was also a factor in my decision – and even Eurohoops had presented Saric at that time as the favorite to get the award, getting on the bandwagon and ignoring the obvious.
Eurohoops had followed Giannis’ steps since he was an unknown playing in the Greek junior leagues, the English spelling of his name was still debated and Greek powerhouse Panathinaikos was thinking about offering him a contract. Still, back in 2014 even we couldn’t fully comprehend and present the significance of being an active NBA player with qualities that lead to today’s phenomenon.
The fact that Giannis was already part of the NBA pushed him away from FIBA Europe’s acknowledgment. Of course, it has to be added that the progress of Giannis in just two years is more than amazing, so who knows what his ceiling can be. And this fact makes the 2014 FIBA blunder even bigger in retrospective.