Currently the author of his best career season after a EuroBasket in which he particularly shone last summer, Lauri Markkanen is rather well placed to compare the NBA game to the FIBA game. And he too – like Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic – thinks scoring in the American league is easier than in Europe.
Second best scorer of the last Euro where he took Finland to the quarter-finals of the competition, Markkanen confirms in the NBA this season, he who is shooting more than 25 points per game in his new Jazz colors. A production that allowed him to land a place in the All-Star Game for the first time as well as on… Draymond Green’s podcast, in which Lauri recently spoke.
One of the topics discussed during the interview? The difference between the NBA game and the FIBA game, particularly in the aspect of scoring. Is it more difficult to score in Europe? For Lauri, the answer is yes.
“In Europe, we do not receive the same whistles as in the NBA. There is no three-second rule in defense, we only play 40 minutes which obviously limits the number of points on average.
It’s just not the same basketball. When I watched Greece face the Czech Republic at the Euros, there were five guys waiting for Giannis in the racket, because there is no three-second rule.
This refrain is not new.
Luka Doncic made a similar statement four years ago when he was just a rookie with the Dallas Mavericks. Like Markkanen, he stressed the importance of three second rulewhich prevents NBA defenders from putting their tent in the racket as can sometimes be the case in Europe.
But Luka also spoke about the dimensions of the land, which is larger in the American League (28.7 x 15.2m) compared to the FIBA field (28m x 15m). Who says smaller field necessarily says less freedom of movement, quite the opposite of the NBA where attackers enjoy today in the face of the many spaces they have. With the ubiquity of the 3-point shooter, rules aimed at smoothing the game, the fast pace and the fact that you rarely see two traditional interiors squatting the key like in the past, offensive players in the NBA today have an ideal playground for chaining cards to scoring.
Some Big League players, when they switched from the American game to the FIBA game in the last Olympic Games in Tokyo, felt this difference. Whether in terms of style of play, rules, or even in the way of sanctioning certain contacts or not, the adaptation was not easy for everyone at Team USA. And Draymond Green remembers it very well.
“When we played against France last year [aux JO, NDLR.], they had aligned two real pivots: Rudy Gobert and Moustapha Fall. We looked at each other and we were like, ‘yo what is that?’ So yeah clearly, it’s not the same basketball”.
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Source texte : The Volume
