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Donatas Motiejūnas, 18 years old, 2.13m, F/C
He already is a big thing actually
One of the leaders of the Lithuanian league - stats.
Draft Watch: Who's hot, who's not?
Who's Hot
[...]
Donatas Motiejunas, F, Lithuania
Every year NBA GMs fly around the world looking for the next Dirk Nowitzki. There have been lots of pretenders -- from Nikoloz Tskitishvilli to Vladimir Radmanovic to Andrea Bargnani (who actually looks pretty good this season) to Danilo Gallinari -- but the next Nowitzki has proven to be pretty elusive. This year's Dirk wannabe is Motiejunas -- a 7-foot, 215-pound forward who, you guessed it, runs the floor, has a pretty jumper and can play multiple positions.
Motiejunas has many of the same red flags as those other guys. Scouts say he is soft, needs to add a lot of strength and is playing against watered down competition in Lithuania. However, he's averaging more than 20 points and shooting around 50 percent from 3-point territory -- that's not bad for an 18-year-old in any league in Europe. While it's highly likely he stays in Europe for another season, a couple of international scouts are telling me there are rumblings he might leave.
Said one NBA executive who watched Motiejunas this year: "He's the closest kid I've seen to Dirk coming out of Europe. Honestly. I know what you're thinking. But this kid could be really good."
Somewhere, Bill Simmons is licking his chops for the third round of our annual draft debate.
Who's Hot
[...]
Donatas Motiejunas, F, Lithuania
Every year NBA GMs fly around the world looking for the next Dirk Nowitzki. There have been lots of pretenders -- from Nikoloz Tskitishvilli to Vladimir Radmanovic to Andrea Bargnani (who actually looks pretty good this season) to Danilo Gallinari -- but the next Nowitzki has proven to be pretty elusive. This year's Dirk wannabe is Motiejunas -- a 7-foot, 215-pound forward who, you guessed it, runs the floor, has a pretty jumper and can play multiple positions.
Motiejunas has many of the same red flags as those other guys. Scouts say he is soft, needs to add a lot of strength and is playing against watered down competition in Lithuania. However, he's averaging more than 20 points and shooting around 50 percent from 3-point territory -- that's not bad for an 18-year-old in any league in Europe. While it's highly likely he stays in Europe for another season, a couple of international scouts are telling me there are rumblings he might leave.
Said one NBA executive who watched Motiejunas this year: "He's the closest kid I've seen to Dirk coming out of Europe. Honestly. I know what you're thinking. But this kid could be really good."
Somewhere, Bill Simmons is licking his chops for the third round of our annual draft debate.
Actualy I don't remember any hype over him ever. Before Motiejunas there was Andriuskevicius, who was so called "next Sabas" and earlier was Rinkevicius, who never played for Zalgiris first team and left directly to US after finishing Sabonis bball school, then dissapeared at all and came back to LT a year or so ago and now is too poor even for LKL worst teams. While Andriuskevicius was really good at similar age, atleast in youth competitions he was one of the best players in Europe and was among leaders almost in most stats' categories. He didn't has chance to play in LKL in some weaker team, only in Zalgiris, but there were games when he played good and I even remember when he played really great in EL's one of decisive games' OT for Zalgiris against Scavolini, when scored triple, made dunk and Zalgiris won. As I already said in some other thread, his mistake was moving to NBA too early, cause he felt like a star already and wanted everything instantly (money, cars and etc.) what real stars has. Even Sabas talked personaly with him and tried to convince him not to go there, but he didn't listen. He paid badly for that.
These things can't not to influence mentality. Actually, there was already some messages about strange behaviour of Donatas. The coach of Aisciai was mentioning that there are problems inside the team and that Donatas is really "interesting personality" 
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