Rating Nicolas Batum In France vs. Turkey at FIBA World Championships

France was just out-matched. Need to drain threes to bust that zone.

the rest of the Australian team only had 2.

Primoz Brezec had 4.

It looks like the Aussies where out classed.

From the beginning, their offense looked worse than maybe any other team I saw. As a team, they couldn’t pass or dribble and their shots were generally poor too. They didn’t set as many off-the-ball screens as the better teams like Spain and Turkey and Lithuania did. They didn’t move without the ball as much. They just always looked like that group of guys you play pickup basketball with. The guys you’ve never seen before in your life and nobody really knows what to do. It was some of the worst offense I’ve seen from a professional team maybe.

What France did well is they hustled and played defense and really tried hard to win. That means something. In this case, it got them into the Top 16 teams in the tournament. But their previously stalwart D crumpled against Turkey. I don’t think Turkey is exactly a better team than Spain or Lithuania. Maybe their coach was finally able to go over some film and figure out how to play against France’s D. Something happened, though. That was France’s first really awful defensive performance of the tournament.

For Batum, I never felt like he played poorly really. He never hurt his team. At the very worst, he wouldn’t do much on offense, he’d keep his man mostly locked down on D, and he’d help his teammates out on D. When a player is doing that, you can’t hate on them too much.

The problem was, Batum was easily the team’s best player on offense. And the only time the team ran any plays through Batum was after Batum took over the ball and scored himself. It was like the team or coach then thought “Hey! He looked pretty good just now! Let’s figure out how to give him the ball!” I remember most vividly seeing that during Game 1 against Spain. Batum hadn’t been doing much and then he makes that dunk and the next couple times down the court, the offense was running through Batum. Heck, the rest of the game, Batum was the main focus. And they won. So that was neat.

On the flip side, Batum is still really young. He’s most comfortable being a role player and scoring when he sees some advantageous situation. That’s really good for us here at Portland, because we’re already stocked full of players that are more than willing to shoot the ball. Roy and Aldridge are most useful when they’re shooting, and they’re good at it. Andre likes to put up a decent number of shots per game. The team will be looking to give Oden his. We don’t want anymore players making their identity on shooting. Players like Batum who put up those super efficient 10 points per game are what are needed. The advantage of not being The Scorer on the team, is that the opponent will often kind of get lulled to sleep guarding you. Batum has shown he’s really good at picking up on that brief moment and making a play.

That’s the stuff Batum was doing during the tournament that disappointed a lot of us. The team needed a “go to” scorer. Batum at times rose to the occasion. Just as often, he played the same style of basketball that he always has. It just looked like Batum was inactive to us. I think Batum was just slipping back into his role-player habits. France can be disappointed that Nic didn’t get more aggressive during the last few games (although really, the team went guard-heavy and the guards hardly ever looked at Batum that last game. Whether that’s Batum’s fault or their fault, I don’t know), as Blazer fans, I didn’t hardly see anything to be disappointed in. Batum experienced a little bit of the burden of being The Guy on a team. He sometimes really shone in that role. At times he made a lot of mistakes. But Batum the role player is consistent and solid. Even during the tournament. We can still be excited by the kid.