re: We really need Odo

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Nothing is foreign to me about how things work over there in basketball and soccer.

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Then why are you judging European players based on the observation that U.S. colleges "beat their pros?"

If you understood how things are organized there, you would never make that observation.

I'll clarify it for you further. The top 3 percent of U.S. high school basketball players play NCAA college basketball and 1 percent of college players play in the NBA. Probably 5 percent of of youth league players in the major European basketball countries will play some level of adult club basketball. Remember, there is no such thing as intercollegiate basketball there. It's a club system from youth league to retirement. And there are 54 teams in Spain's three most competitive club leagues (18 in the ACB, their best league). So a higher percentage of their players play in the top three levels of club basketball than play in COLLEGE basketball in the U.S.

So if a U.S. college plays a team from, say, Spain's third-tier league, they are playing players who are further down their own country's pecking order of players than typical D-I American college players are in the U.S.

So, when you're saying American colleges wipe the floor with their pros, well, who exactly are they wiping the floor with? Is it a highly competitive club team or is it players that are further down their own country's pool of players than what American college players in the American pool of players?

So what's the point in saying Euros suck because college teams beat their pros? It's a completely different system.

Top-end Euro countries are competitive with U.S. basketball when the level of competition is apples-to-apples. Spain is a threat to beat the U.S. in international competition despite having a population barely larger than California. European powers can compete with us well in age-group competition as well.

It's hard to match up U.S. college teams with European club teams because there isn't a level of club ball that is quite like American college ball. Lower level clubs tend to not be college standard but the top-level clubs tend to take the talent right out of the youth clubs (Rubio signed with his club's pro team at 16, for example) so there isn't this "bridge" level where the top 3 percent stop over before going "pro."