My main man Sonny Weems appears to be doing fairly well in Lithuania. Relative to some of the other NBAers (including Sonny’s teammate Ty Lawson) who chose to take their talents to Europe, he’s doing spectacular. In his Euroleague debut, Weems fell just two points shy of leading his team, Zalgiris Kaunus, in scoring. He dropped 16 points (although it took him 16 shots to get there) while grabbing a team-high six boards and collecting a couple of steals. His team lost by 13 to Nenad Krstic, Andrei Kirilenko, and CSKA Moscow, but I believe CSKA is a top-flight team over there. Thirteen-point loss or not, Sonny had a few impressive moments. Here are his highlights…
I was a little disappointed with the lack of slam dunks, but I suppose Sonny isn’t over there to learn how to dunk, is he? The lightning-quick between-the-legs crossover which kicks off the video was absolutely excellent, and I like the fact that all but one of his buckets were scored inside of the paint. Sonny really needs to improve in three areas: ball handling, three-point shooting, and getting all the way to the bucket. In this video he showed us little flashes of brilliance in two of those three areas. Unfortunately, he clunked all three of his long-range attempts. However, in his second Euroleague game, Sonny went 2-3 from distance. He scored a team-high 21 points on 8-14 from the floor, and you can see one of his three-balls in the game highlights…
Yeah, Zalgiris lost once again, but it appears that Sonny’s play probably wasn’t the reason. I’d also like to point out the fact that, clearly, Euroleague has much different standards than we do when it comes to “huge” dunks. Oh, and who remembers Jorge Garbajosa? The former Craptor played in this game, going 0-2 for the other team.
Anyway, it looks like Sonny’s doing alright overseas. Nothing crazy, but solid stuff. Oh, before I forget, let me clarify something: Sonny’s team has played 13 games thus far, not two. The two games I discussed are the pair of Euroleague games they’ve played thus far. See, not all of their games are played in the Euroleague; Zalgiris plays in a variety of leagues and tournaments. I chose to talk about the Euroleague games because, to my knowledge, they’re the most competitive and meaningful. Sonny actually seems to be saving his best performances for the top competition. He’s averaging 11 points in one of the lesser leagues, and 13 points in another (total of three games in each of those leagues).
Now that I know where to find the info, I’ll keep you posted on Sonny’s progress.
