Fran’s refused to play for Orlando (so it’s hard to call him a bust—he’s had a great season in the Euroleagues this year), Danilo was injured his one and only season but still is just as promising as he was when drafted.

So basically your list is down to Pau and Andrea Bargnani. That’s a 50% success rate (100% if you are a delusional Raptors fan) (actually, it’s kind of redundant to say “delusional Raptors fan”— is there any other kind?). Not sure your argument is really panning out here. Considering we have three successful euro transplants on our team, it seems like a curious argument to be making.

What seems to be the case is that like drafting Americans, it helps to look at past performance. Guys without a body of work who were workout warriors tend to bust out at a pretty high rate. Guys who have performed at a high level before entering the bigs tend to be pretty good, unless they’re just too physically limited.

Rubio hasn’t put up extremely high numbers, and there are question marks about his physical limitations. But he’s performed too well at too young an age to be a bust, I think.

Ecstatic, really. This kid plays in the second best league in the world, and has been the starter and probably the best player on a very good team in that league, playing with one hand for most of the season, and won DPOY as a scrawny 18 year old.

Look at his stats. As Hollinger has pointed out, euroleague stat translations are usually pretty predictable. By his formulas, we can expect Rubio to be putting up something like 10/5/11 per 36.

The one notable miss in Hollinger’s euroleague translations by the way was Nic Batum, who Hollinger hugely underestimated. Seems notable that Batum was the youngest of the folks Hollinger surveyed – I think his translation predictably doesn’t take into account year over year difference nearly enough. Note that this cuts even more in Rubio’s favor.