Mario Hezonja, Evan Fournier, Andrew Nicholson prepping for FIBA tournaments
The FIBA tournaments are coming! They start this week and three Orlando Magic players — Mario Hezonja, Evan Fournier and Andrew Nicholson — are prepping.
Mario Hezonja is letting the world know he is ready for the NBA . . . or at least for Eurobasket.
Hezonja posted 24 points in 20 minutes as Croatia defeated Bosnia in a friendly ahead of next week’s Eurobasket tournament. He scored 11 in three minutes.
In the process (highlights below), Hezonja showed off his shooting ability, scoring and playmaking and movement in transition. These highlights are the exact reason the Magic made him the fifth overall selection in last year’s Draft.
His scoring burst — and it was just that, a scoring burst as he hit five of six 3-pointers in the game — helped Croatia pull away in the fourth quarter and put the game completely away.
His coach is keeping realistic expectations though. After the game he acknowledged Hezonja exploded and had a good game, but because of his youth he is just as likely to have a bad performance the next time out.
That is the way it goes with young players. Something like that is probably more of what the Magic can expect when he arrives for the regular season. A good game here, sprinkled in with a few inconsistent performances.
Hezonja though has shown plenty of potential and plenty of scoring ability to make plenty of believers. Even against international competition.
In the first game, Croatia defeated Estonia with Hezonja failing to score. Ups and downs are expected.
Croatia completed their Eurobasket warmup with a win over Israel that included Mario Hezonja draining a three and celebrating with the opposing coach. Good times.
Mario Hezonja hit a 3 up 12 with 5 seconds left and then dapped the opposing coach pic.twitter.com/43LdxmgWsA
— Zach Harper (@talkhoops) August 28, 2015
It will be interesting to see how Croatia does. The injury to Bojan Bogdanovic could slow the team down some. But with a strong play in group play, Croatia could certainly compete for a medal. The Eurobasket Web site ranked Croatia fourth in this week’s Power Rankings (interestingly, Serbia is the hot team heading into the tournament).
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Europe, Evan Fournier is a little more experienced and comfortable in his role with his national team.
France completed their pre-Eurobasket run with a win over Germany on Friday. Fournier is going to be an important cog off the bench for France. Nicolas Batum figures to be the team’s leading scorer with Rudy Gobert anchoring the defense and Tony Parker running things at the point.
Fournier will be on the cover of Basket Hebdo ahead of Eurobasket, discussing the upcoming tournament and his time in the NBA.
France has done much of its training away from friendlies, so there are not a lot of stats. Fournier will play a key role for one of the favorites to win Eurobasket.
The final player competing in international tournaments this summer is Andrew Nicholson (and training camp invitee Melvin Ejim). Both were officially named to the roster competing at the Tournament of the Americas on Saturday.
Nicholson helped Canada win the gold at the Pan Am Games earlier this summer.
The team preparing for the Tournament of the Americas though is a much heartier squad. Anthony Bennett and Andrew Wiggins, two of the last three top overall picks in the NBA Draft. Nicholson’s role will be much more reduced. Kelly Olynyk, Robert Sacre, Anthony Bennett and Dwight Powell are the other forwards and centers on the roster.
However, Nicholson has always played well in FIBA tournaments. He has put in a lot of time into Team Canada in the last three years and put up good numbers.
This year, in his reduced role, he is not scoring at the same rate that he was before. But at the Tuto Marchand Continental Cup, Nicholson scored 16 points and Ejim recorded 11 points and 11 rebounds as Canada won the tournament for the first time.
It has certainly been a mixed bag. Before that championship game, Nicholson had scored only three points. Still coach Jay Triano was relying heavily on Nicholson. He played 61 minutes in the four games, playing off the bench for Canada.
Both Nicholson and Sacramento Kings guard Nik Stauskas have had to focus more on the defensive end this tournament to get playing time on this improved Canada team. Triano has been trying to keep them confident, as he told Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun:
"I think both those guys are offensive weapons for us. We don’t really judge offensive play as much as we do the energy and effort at the defensive end of the floor. I think offence is something is going to come and go, but I give both of those guys credit because they’re really buying into what we’re doing on the defensive end of the floor and they’ve been very good that way."
Magic fans would certainly like to see Nicholson improve his defense. That has been the missing piece to his game, especially when his offense goes away. The FIBA game seems to fit his eye better. He, like Hezonja, is liable to go on these scoring binges off the bench like he did in this week’s championship game.
All three will be key contributors to their team’s Olympic bids. It will be good to see how they all play.