Dominican Republic (DOM)
07/03/2015
William Rosario's Somewhere in the Americas
to read

Twitter educated me on Dominicana

SAN JUAN (William Rosario's Somewhere in the Americas) - Yesterday I woke up to an e-mail message from a friend. The subject was "You don't know anything about basketball". I was naturally curious and opened it to find a twitter discussion around a column I wrote a month ago called The Future.

The discussion was around the fact that I dismissed the Dominican Republic as a national team with no future highlighting Karl Towns as their only prospect. So Dominicans went crazy. One of them, Felipe Paniagua, went further and commented on the column with a list of the actual prospects the country has in their talent pool.

"These are some of the other Dominicans apart from Karl Towns (19).
NCAA: Brandone Francis (20) Florida Gators, Adonys Henríquez (20) UFC, Ángel Delgado (20) Seton Hall, Nehemías Morillo (23) USF.
Professional: Juan Jose Garcia (25) CAI Zaragoza (ACB), Sadiel Rojas (25) UCAM Murcia (ACB), Ronald Roberts (24) Santa Cruz Warriors (NBA D League), Orlando Sanchez (26) Westchester Knicks (NBA D League), Eloy Vargas (26) Los Angeles D-Fenders (NBA D League), James Feldeine (26) Pallacanestro Cantu (Serie A), Edgar Sosa (26) Dinamo Basket Sassari (Serie A)."

He has a point. That's a big list of young Dominican players.

And I don't have any doubt that they will be a part of the national team in the future. But let's break it down.

There's a reason why I didn't include NCAA players in that column. You never know.

NCAA basketball players are in that bubble that is college basketball, where they can be factors and then one year later be out of the game, or bounce around at the international league level. And this goes for anybody, even the USA.

Judging by that standard, Gerry Macnamara, Jimmer Freddette or even last year Doug McDermott could have been taken as future stars of the US team at the international level. In Puerto Rico, every year there's a great future promise out of college basketball that doesn't seem to materialize. So I prefer to not judge them. I try to wait a bit and see what kind of men basketball players they become at the professional level.

If you take those kids that are mentioned in that NCAA part of the Dominican future you have Brandone Francis, who hasn't been able to get in the court for Billy Donovan, Adonys Henriquez who is averaging 10.7 points per game as a freshman, Angel Delgado averaging 9.3 points and 9.9 rebounds as a freshman and Morillo who averages 10 points as a junior.

Those are good numbers, but if I go back to some of the guys I mention in that column from Puerto Rico coming out of college, you would have predicted great things. Guillermo Diaz averaged 17 points per game as a junior, Vasallo averaged 19 as a senior and Dennis Clemente, just to give another example averaged 16 points per game as a senior. None of them are part of the national team program now.

The only reason I mention Towns is because he is as sure a thing as there is. He's one of those surefire prospects.

But when I look at Canada I go with Andrew Wiggins, Tristan Thompson, Cory Joseph, Kelly Olynyk, Tyler Ennis-McIntyre, Andrew Nicholson, Nik Stauskas and Andrew Bennett. All of them are NBA players.

When I do Argentina I go Facundo Campazzo, Nicola Laprovittola, Marcos Delia, Matias Bortolin, Nicolas Brussino, Franco Giorgetti. All of them are professional players and a big part of that national team that won the silver medal at the South American Championship in 2014. Except Campazzo, who wasn't there, but we know about Campazzo. He's been a factor at the top level.

When I do Venezuela I go Greivis Vasquez, David Cubillan, Gregory Vargas, Nestor Colmenares, Windi Graterol and Gregory Echenique. All of them are professional players, and with the exception of Echenique, they make up the core group of the gold medal team from the 20104 South American Championship.

The same with Mexico and Brazil.

Dominicana does not have that. The last time we saw Francis and Towns in the same national team they did not even make it past the Centrobasket U17 in 2011. Those youngsters still have not had a real impact at the international level like the others I mentioned in my column have had at the moment.

Where I made a mistake was in not acknowledging James Feldeine, Eloy Vargas and Orlando Sanchez as the future for Dominicana. It was irresponsible and not true to myself because I actually love that threesome.

Feldeine was impressive for the national team in Caracas at the 2013 FIBA Americas Championship and both Vargas and Sanchez have had flashes of great potential.

But is that team elite? Even on paper are they favorites going in? Would you put them over Canada, Argentina, Brasil, Mexico and Venezuela?

If you say yes, then that's an honest discussion to have but this was my point in The Future column: I don't.

And let me be clear. I come from the school of liking high IQ players over athletically gifted talent.

For the Dominican Republic, Francisco Garcia, Jack Michael Martinez (at his peak) and Eulis Baez (who has hinted at retirement from the NT) are not coming through the door. I don't see another argument to make for them other than that big list full of players that are yet to prove themselves at the international level.

A Dominican team that I have said before is wonderfully run by the right people. Eduardo Najri and company are some of the most professional and committed businessmen in basketball and Rafael Uribe and the federation are among the most active in FIBA in my opinion. I just see their national team as one in transition, out of the elite bunch for now.

All of which can change in a heartbeat, if Al Horford is there.

There is no doubt in my mind that if he plays for Dominicana, he will be the best player next September in the FIBA Americas Championship in Monterrey. But that's a big if.

Even if he is saying all the right things, Horford still has not committed to playing this summer. We have not seen him in a Dominican Republic jersey in three years and he is a big commodity nowadays in the NBA with a history of injuries and the last year of his contract coming up with the Hawks.

Add that to the fact that the FIBA Americas Championship has a killer schedule, specially to injury ridden superstars (that have to carry their teams). If the team goes all the way, you are talking about 10 games in 12 days. That's tough for a guy like Horford and if he decides to skip it and Dominicana does not qualify to the Olympics, it will be even more years without him in the national team.

I hope we see him, I'm a fan and would love to catch Horford performances in Monterrey. But I don't include him in conversations about the future or even the present of the national team. When he says yes, I'll write another column dedicated to his greatness and the new and improved chances of the Dominican team. We'll see.

To close, I will say that first of all I don't have Twitter, because I think it is a social media mainly comprised of uneducated trolls thinking that the fact that they can direct 140 characters to somebody legitimizes any kind of badly mounted argument they have. But this has made me rethink all of it. I’ve read some sound opinions around this, full of the right perspective.

I love these kinds of barbershop discussions around basketball, among other things. Maybe Twitter will get that out of my system. I'll try to watch out for trolls and stupidity. I know it's not easy, but I'll try, I promise I'll try.

William Rosario

FIBA

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William Rosario

William Rosario

If you want the jet-lagged musings of a guy who spends half the year living basketball in the Americas right there in the organisational trenches of the continent's senior and youth championships, along with the South American and FIBA Americas League, then this column is definitely for you. William Rosario, FIBA Americas Communications Director by day and filmmaker by night (some nights), joins FIBA's team of columnists from around the world to bring you "Somewhere in the Americas".