NBA Roundup, May 11 (Jerebko interview)

• Jonas Jerebko Interview / Evaluation

Before we traveled to Rome, we had a chance to visit with Swedish small forward and projected second round pick Jonas Jerebko, both playing and practicing with his team Angelico Biella in the Italian first division. Jerebko’s team knocked off Armani Jeans Milano in impressive fashion on primetime TV in their sparkling, beautiful new gym, and their starting 3-man had a typical game by his standards.

Not a whole lot has changed with Jerebko since the last time we evaluated him in late January—many of his strengths and weakness remain the same. It is impressive to see his physical profile in person and notice how much he’s worked on his body—he’s gone from a scrawny 192 pounds when he first arrived here to a chiseled 225.

In the scrimmage in particular he did a great job showing how much he can impact the game with his terrific length and activity level. He gets his hands on pretty much everything in his area, coming up with tons of deflections, steals and offensive and defensive rebounds, indeed ranking amongst the top players in the league in those categories at his position.

Offensively, he looked solid knocking down shots with his feet set, but still isn’t much of a threat on this end of the court, as his skill-level remains average at best. He lacks aggressiveness on this end of the floor, not showing much confidence in his ball-handling skills, and passing up opportunities to attack his matchup, which helps explain why he almost never gets to the free throw line.

This is also part of the reason he’s such a valuable role-player, though, as he understands his role perfectly, rarely commits mistakes, and is very comfortable doing the little things for his team. The maturity and unselfishness he shows at his age is very impressive.

Defensively, Jerebko knows how to use his terrific size, length and activity level to his advantage, and didn’t seem to have much of a problem staying in front of a very aggressive 6-4 shooting guard in David Hawkins, one of the best scorers in the Italian league. His potential on this end of the floor is considerable.

Before the game, we had a chance to sit down with Jerebko and pick his brain on a couple of issues, which you can see here:



As mentioned in the video, Jerebko will be competing at the Eurocamp in Treviso, where he may be able to show a more well-rounded offensive game than he can at Biella.