Thursday, August 23, 2007

Nene Not a Factor in Game One for Brazil

(Boulder-CO) Team Brazil earned their first victory of the 2007 FIBA games yesterday by defeating Team Canada, 75-67. Brazil was offensively paced by Leandro Barbosa’s game-high 30 points, while Nene only chipped in seven points and three rebounds.

My take is this: While I would like to see Nene be the leader of Team Brazil in both scoring and rebounding the quick run-and-gun FIBA style of play is not suited for Big Brazil’s personal style of play. And to compound things, having a guy as fast as Leandro leading the way makes the situations that much more difficult for Nene. In addition to theses factors, all I really care about in regards to Team Brazil is that they return Nene to the Nuggets injury free and in great physical condition for the 2007 Nuggets campaign. We all witnessed what kind of player Nene can be when he is in shape, and to have that kind of weapon next year on the Nuggets from the word go is going to be invaluable to the franchise.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I watched this whole game, and while Nene wasn't involved that much offensively, he made some great passes. That's always the area that I question Nene's abilities (specifically passing out of double teams), and from what I saw in this game, he seems to have been working on it in the off-season. Good news, because he'll be getting double-teamed a lot this season, and he's going to need to get the ball out of there without sloppy turnovers.

Nugg Doctor said...

You're not a nerd, stumbleweed. I too have been watching the games all day/night long. Sometimes I even watch the teams that have no Nuggets ties! What can I say? It's an addiction.

Thanks for reading,

The Nugg Doctor

Kieran McCarthy said...

Man, I was a little worried watching Brazil last night. I mean, it looked like fat Nene was back. Say what you will, the Nene out there last night was not the same Nene we saw playing for the Nuggs in the second half of the season. That said, Melo's looking awesome right now. He's looking like he's in great shape.