Lost in the hullabaloo surrounding a certain Serbian player whose last name rhymes with “Poke Itch”, another Balkan player in Philadelphia is doing similar things on a smaller scale. That’s right; Dario “The Croat GOAT*” Saric can sometimes pass the ball, and sometimes get double-digit rebounds, and while he has no post moves that I can discern (either that or he has them and his coach doesn’t let him try them out), he’s got a jumper just like that Serbian dude. Plus, he’s a rookie. Just think how good he’ll be once he has a year of NBA experience under his belt, not to mention a full NBA offseason working with the best! If he’s not averaging 15/10/5 when he comes back next year I’m going to be very displeased.
Saric required a career-high seventeen field goal attempts to score his eighteen points. Since the refs hate Croatia and all Croats, he wasn’t given any free throws to pad his point total. It’s not his fault that he was born in that country. Regardless, the Sixers got the win over the catastrophically imploding Hornets, so who even needs lame free throws anyway? This video is nothing but buckets and bucket replays. And a shot of Saric pumping himself up after making a three-pointer. And three minutes of halftime entertainment that I thought was hilarious.
*Nickname ignores existence of other Croats who are better-qualified to be the Croat GOAT, such as Drazen Petrovic