By Lefteris Moutis
Politicians and coaches have a great common point. They must always consult their numbers, but also need to be aware of the situation beyond them. The economic ratios reflect the reality, but behind them, there are people. Exactly the same applies in basketball – behind the statistics, there is the game. And for a player to be good, he doesn’t need to have only good statistics, but to help the team, to be effective and to cooperate with his teammates.
This is something that Sasha Vujacic doesn’t seem to do effectively in his first season in the Euroleague, where he cashed his reputation after seven years in the NBA with a “gold” contract valued two million dollars a year. Efes Anadolu invested on him, but eliminated early from the Euroleague Top 16 with the star of the team to be unfit for the role of the leader.
Vujacic, without a doubt, is a very gifted player, but in Efes he was asked to do something that had never done in his eleven years career, to become the leader of a team that chases titles. From the age of 16, when he started playing professionally in Italian club Udine he learned either to take many shots in a small team without star, or to be a complementary player in the best team of the world, Lakers, having as a starter in front of him the best player in the world.
As the Slovenian guard has admitted, the presence of Kobe Bryant beyond the obvious benefits for him it was a great disadvantage “for my minutes of play and my development as a player”.
In his last season in NBA, Vujacic wore for 56 games the jersey of New Jersey Nets and made career-highs in most of his statistics. But again his team hadn’t had big goals. The lock out in the NBA became a wonderful opportunity for him to earn money by deciding to sign with the rich Efes club, who had thrown tones of gold into the market early in the summer. His numbers show that he doubled his performance (specially in scoring). But what effect is he having in the floor?
In a team full of quality players, Vujacic takes about the 20% of the shots for his team in every game. Plus, he doesn’t help in defense, he doesn’t create for his teammates and also very often during the match he shots so much that he destroys the plays of his team. He seems to play, as someone close to the team said, “by the mood he is waking up every day -sometimes he is in good mood, sometimes not. No one can predict it”.
Vujacic gives his own version: “European basketball is very different compared to what I had remembered seven years ago. It has become faster, more physical (editor’s note: as you can see in the video) than it was, but still has not reached the NBA. It’s very tactical. I’m still trying to adapt”.
In any case, Efes may have already regretted the money (don’t forget that it was two million dollars) they spent for him and they will think it twice this summer, when the time to activate the second year of his contract will come.