The last couple of years has really been great for Hamed Haddadi, the 7-2 center from Iran.

First Iran won the 2007 Asiabasket with Haddadi in the middle. It was Iran’s first ever medal in the tournament.

The win qualified the Iranian basketball team to play in their first Olympic games in 60 years. Though the team would lose all five of their matches, Haddadi led the Beijing Olympics in both rebounding and blocked shots.

Thereafter, he was signed to an NBA contract and became the first Iranian NBA player.

In 2009, he helped lead Iran to the Jones Cup Championship and recently won the Asia Championships, in which he was named tournament MVP and again led the field in rebounding and blocked shots.

With all his success in international competition, Haddadi opened up to the Mehr News Agency about his experience in the recent Asia Championships and his frustrations during his NBA rookie season.

Confidence in Asia and in the NBA
During his interview with Mehr News, Haddadi insisted that even had Yao Ming been present, Iran would have still defeated China. “I played well against China in the final.” said Haddadi. “We could have won the match even if Yao Ming would have played against us.”

Haddadi moved on to talk at length about his debut season with the Memphis Grizzlies, which has been misquoted and mistranslated across the web as his being arrogant and egotistical, which is not the case.

The quote being circulated is that Haddadi said that he “is the star of the Memphis Grizzlies, but he is sittng on the bench.” When actually Haddadi was responding to the question “Will Hamed Haddadi become a star in NBA one day?”

According to Interbasket’s Iranian members, Haddadi answered in a joking manner, not a serious one, saying that he is a star, but a  “bench star” at that.  So if our re-translation is correct, Haddadi is just having fun and making light of his situation last year.

But the interview does get a little deeper into the subject of his playing time.

“The Memphis head coach does not have any faith in me. I think I have played okay whenever I got the chance to play.” Haddadi said. “If their lack of trust continues I will change my team, I’m even willing to come back to Iran. After all, we are the Asian champions and we do have a decent league.”

Haddadi averaged six minutes a game last season to the tune of 2.5 points and 2.5 rebounds.

“I don’t claim that I’m among the best players in NBA, but I think I’m at least a third tier player.  If I’m on bench due to lack of capability I would not complain,” added Haddadi, “but if I feel that I can’t get my right, I would prefer to leave the NBA.”

The Grizzlies started Marc Gasol ahead of Haddadi last year, and they went on to draft UCONN center Hasheem Thabeet with the #2 pick this year.