Hoops

Sydney Kings invited to Atlas Challenge

Sydney went 5-0. Some teams they faced were national teams which were weak nations (Qatar, Ukraine). Other teams they played were just random selection teams ("USA All Stars" & "Lithuania All Stars").

Sydney Kings won the tournament beating Lithuania in the Final.

Anybody know of a link where the results of this comp are?

I'm interested to see how a few of the Kings players went.

The tournament is finished but can't seem to find anything online about it.

Thomas' role was mainly to protect the rim, not much plays were run for him so his scoring looked meh. He's a pretty efficient scorer ala Pineau when he got the opportunity. Rebounding numbers could be higher but no surprise its affected by his shot blocking and slight frame.

Thomas stats as senior in a weak conference are very average for a 7"er, take away blocks and not much there.

Thomas will never be a beast, but he's learned to compensate for that. And he is loooong! Natural shot blocker. I have no doubt he could be a backup centre in the NBL

IMHO only 1 of the 4 regular roster spots left would be up for grabs by these guys. The rest may have to settle for offers of DP spots.

The ones that do well in the challenge will get invited to the pre-seasons for final evaluation so no guarantees if any will make the final roster.

Nice to see Liam Thomas given a chance. Skillwise no doubt he can play in the NBL but I'm not sure if he would physically be able to handle the strength of NBL centres nowadays.

Looking at Bose and Muo is a bit odd since no shortage at 2 and 3 with their current lineup but I suspect they are preparing for the possibility of Ellis getting picked up, hence the talks about Hakim Warrick, etc.

Much still depends on their choice for starting C. Saw quite a few interesting names on the Orlando SL that Gaze will be heavily scouting. One that stood out to me and someone that Gaze would hone in on was Eric Mika. His game is very similar to Mark Bradtke.

I like the idea of being able to trial players, but you gotta think that not many are actually in real consideration?

Very much looking forward to seeing Toly back in the purple and gold but with Blanchfield, we're all full up at his spot... It's a really good chance for Dane to show what he's got and I hope he treats it as an audition for more playing time...

Otherwise you'd think that only Hooley could be a chance, maybe Singh, if they get a really good starting 5 and want to take a flyer on him... Some discussion elsewhere on why they would add an American import in Raivio, especially one as random as him...

Not sure if I missed it but I don't recall seeing a thread on this here. NBA All Defensive teams were announced recently with the first team consisting of:

Howard
Rondo
LeBron
Kobe
KG

(for the record that's a pretty impressive offensive team as well).

The thing that struck me as odd was that Bogut received just one vote despite leading the league in blocked shots. I know he didn't play a full season, and his overall output was down on last year, but defensively he was still first class this season.

NBL had a similar situation with Ballinger leading the league in blocks (I think? At least top few) and getting no love, but in this sitiation Balls is a bit of a one trick pony defensively while Bogut is not.

Thoughts?

Full list here http://www.nba.com/sixers/news/andre_iguodala_named__20101_2011_05_09.html (it's not an main NBA site as I'm on spoiler alert for today's game and didn't want to visit front page)