The European Cadet Championship: Final Report

The MVP of the championship was honored with the award by being by far the most dominant player seen in Leon. Diot enjoys a physical set that made this possible, as he’s a rather tall point guard, with a good wingspan, that is very quick and explosive for his age. However, what sets him apart from the rest of players in the tourney, and virtually from every guy you can see in youth competitions, is his mental strength and leadership. It’s amazing to see a 16 year old kid who is so aware of his leading star role and at the same time, so responsible exercising it. Always respectful, in defeat he looked even majestic. We’ve been told that he’s a very good student, coming from an excellent family who are true educators that are worried about properly teaching and raising him. Watching Antoine, nobody could say otherwise.

Diot’s winning character is just outstanding, taking over games when things get ugly for his team. You would think that he just waits until the coach simply asks him to win the game for his teams and then he executes. We told you about the exhibition he had against Latvia, entering the game with France down by 19 points and coming away with the victory. But his most brilliant moment came in the semifinals against Lithuania, where he scored 14 points in the last quarter, including various clutch plays such as a complicated layup and a huge steal, in a thrilling game that sent France to the final after coming back from a double-digit deficit.

Of course, Diot is not perfect. You can find his biggest flaws at this moment are in his array of skills. He’s an average ball-handler that enjoys a nice slashing game thanks to his physical set and footwork, while showing good resources to deliver complicated layups with opposition. However, these slashing situations come in transition or semi-transition plays. For him it’s rather difficult to get by his man from a static position. His dribble, and overall game, is particularly concerning regarding his left hand, being seriously unpolished at the moment. When dribbling, he constantly looks for his right hand, using the left just in situations where it’s completely impossible not to, while he keeps the “right” trend also in regards to his layups, even if the play asks for him to make it with his left.

On the other hand, Diot is a pretty nice shooter, with good range and consistent accuracy even firing off the dribble, where he gets up quickly with rather nice mechanics, although he’s surprisingly erratic from the free-throw line.

Not a great passer, he distributes the ball rather well, although mostly looking for low-risk passes. We could say that he’s more of a scoring type point guard (being the fourth best scorer of the championship), although he comes without the baggage that these kind of players tends to carry, featuring, on the contrary, awesome decision making. From time to time, we have seen him deliver some great assists, but as the tournament advanced, it became more infrequent. He’s particularly quick and effective throwing passes in transition, always releasing the ball as soon as possible if someone is in a good position to attack the basket.

Defensively, he has been an important player for France, especially regarding his team approach. In the individual setting, he might eventually suffer against small and quicker point guards, although he did a nice job in the final against his speedy matchup. Also, he tends to choose to go underneath screens rather than hedging and going over them. However, I think it’s just part of his pattern of stressing team defense, being in a better position to help his teammates this way, while we also have to consider that there weren’t many players in the tournament capable of shooting off the dribble with good range and accuracy. Perhaps his best characteristic here is his ability to steal the ball, not only thanks to his wingspan and quick hands, but also due to the way he reads the passing lines. He finished the championship first in this department. His rebounding also deserves mentioning: he showed very good positioning, and his athleticism did the rest.

I personally think that he’s a very promising player. He might raise serious doubts because of his skills, having dominated because of his physical set. Indeed that’s what happened up to a certain extent. But he’s a player that is so focused on the game, so serious about what he does, that I think he will be able to sort out most of his skill limitations. At least, I trust him a lot more than other players who are more skilled but showed highly questionable attitudes.

The hype might be out of control with this Spanish kid, but he’s still a very intriguing basketball project. He was clearly the most interesting prospect born in 1990 seen here, regardless of the problems he faced delivering the premiere skill in basketball: to score.

Surprisingly for a player who seems as if he’s born to play the game whenever he has the ball in his hands, Rubio right now shows a horrible stroke from anywhere on the court. The only way he’s able to consistently add points is through open layups under the basket. Against the least opposition, he doesn’t show a soft touch to net any of his unorthodox layups, while he can be fully open to fire a jumper that most likely won’t go in. Besides limiting his scoring production, this issue makes him much more predictable and easy to defend, as he usually looks for driving and dishing.

At this point someone could ask himself how in the world is this kid a top prospect. Well, as a matter of fact, Rubio can do many things on the court better than almost anyone his age.

Let’s first state that he’s a 6-3 guard who is extremely explosive for a 14 year old kid even if he’s still very skinny. Just checking his rebounding numbers can give you an idea about this, as smart as he in positioning himself in these situations. He can play both guard positions, but his team Joventut Badalona is wisely playing him as a point during the season, a position for which he already has the size and the tools, and where he might become dominant. In the Spanish Cadet National Team, that sadly seems to worry first about winning rather than developing players, he’s primary used as an off guard.

Back to his skills, Rubio is a terrific ball handler, which considering his quickness, excellent first step, footwork and ability to change gears, makes him really hard to stop whenever he decides to step into the lane. He’s also a great passer, enjoying excellent court vision and nice decision making. He can deliver from the perimeter, feeding cutters, but his most typical play is to dish after beating his matchup. He can be quite flashy.

Ricard has gifts not only for the offensive end, but also which are quite valuable on defense as well. Although he didn’t always deliver his best effort, he has awesome potential as a defensive stopper. With quick legs, a good wingspan and quick hands, he’s already an awesome ball-thief (second in the tourney only behind Diot), terrifying any rival here driving the ball.

In our first report from Astorga, we suggested that some of the hype might have gone to his head. Well, in spite of his improvable defensive effort, considering the tournament as a whole, it didn’t seem that way, at least not as clearly. Rubio looks serious about the game, of course from his particular game style, and he's reportedly rather a mentally mature kid for his young age. Indeed he took over the leading role on the team, not only on the floor with his actions, but also vocally, despite being one year younger than most of his mates. All this looks extremely important right now, because if there’s something Ricard can’t afford it’s the luxury of being content with his game, particularly due to his scoring flaws. Right now he can do a lot of things on the court that simply won’t work against superior competition if he doesn’t improve his shooting, even if he keeps developing the other parts of his game.

Perhaps the best combination of height, athleticism and skills in the tourney, he’s far from transmitting the same kind of feelings that both Antoine and Ricard produce. He’s a player who doesn’t necessarily show up in the key moments of the game, nor is he a constant reference on the court, despite his offensive strengths (he finished as the third best scorer in the tournament). Anyway, he’s really a fundamentally sound player, showing lots of finesse in his movements.

Being capable of filling both wing positions, his place on the court will solely depend on how much he grows, as he has the tools to play shooting guard if he doesn’t add a single inch. He’s quite athletic, featuring very nice quickness and leaping ability at his age.

Guard or forward, he will likely be a shooter. It’s his natural instinct, and you can feel it even from the warm up. However, he’s still not too consistent. He enjoys good range, and curious mechanics, with the elbow of his shooting arm being more open than usual. I don’t think this characteristic has to necessarily affect his accuracy, but it’s true that the movement is not always equally fluid.

He displays the ability to shoot off the dribble, but doesn’t show it on a regular basis, which is another reason why he wasn’t the real go-to guy on his team. He prefers to chase open looks, showing nice movement without the ball, including effective backdoor plays. He will likely rely much more on his off the dribble skills in the future given his remarkable ball-handling skills and coordination. He’s one of those players that usually seems balanced on the court. Those same ball-handling skills allow him to penetrate with fair success. He’s not too prolific here, instead preferring to fire from the perimeter, but he enjoys quite a nice first step and decent footwork. He feels noticeably more comfortable slashing and working with his right, although he curiously executes dunks and layups with his left every time he’s alone in transition, which were numerous given how he loves to run the court.

On defense, again like Diot and Rubio, he’s particularly good stealing the ball. His wingspan and quick hands are his weapons. His lateral movement still needs work, though. However, he usually faced smaller players, and it shouldn’t be too much of a problem once he gains strength and some more explosiveness. In this tournament, he hasn’t proved to be too much of a passer. He can dish off after beating his man, but anyway that wasn’t a very common situation for him.

All in all, Bogdanovic is a player who raises less question marks regarding his skills, while apparently his attitude is good. He’s clearly a nice project who should pan out with the necessary effort.