I knew that Nemanja Bjelica had been an old rookie by NBA standards, having spent his early career dominating Europe rather than getting marginalized by ignorant coaches here in the States, but I didn’t realize that he’s currently 31 years old. That’s old! Given the average trajectory of NBA players, he’s either currently near the end of his prime or is actively exiting his prime.
This is a problem because the Serbian Supersteam in Sacramento (SSS) plan is predicated on all members of the Superteam being effective for the five to ten years that the Superteam is active. Now it turns out that the timeline for the SSS will have to be accelerated in order to get the most production out of it, and it’s definitely not going to be going for ten years unless Bjelica is rotated out and another Serb is acquired in his place.
SSS plans might have to adjusted to turn it from a “Superteam” to just a normal team. I don’t want to call it Serbian Scrubs in Sacramento because the theoretical combination of Bogdanovic, Bjelica, and Jokic is anything but scrubby, but if Marko Guduric is added instead of Nikola Jokic, then the SSS is definitely not “Super” anymore. It’s just Serbian. Really, really Serbian.
My only hope at this point is that Bjelica shows himself resistant to aging like many European players seem to be. If he can still be effective at shooting threes at age 37, then the SSS might still bring multiple championships to Sacramento.