Stepping up in FIBA Worlds with Carlos

Carlos Delfino completed a very good performance in Turkey’s FIBA World Championship.  He was the tourney’s third scorer (4th in %) behind Luis Scola and Kevin Durant, top scorer and MVP respectively. His numbers totaled 20.8 PPG, 4.7 RPG, 2.8 APG and 2 SPG.

With Houston Rockets’ Scola, he carried a limited Argentina to a laudable 5th place playing a SG for most of the time. Which, by the way, was a lot:  he was in almost every second of the nine games this short Argentina team played in the Worlds 15 day’s schedule. In fact, he ended being the player with more minutes on court: 36.3 %.  To bring some serenity here, I’ve heard him repeatedly saying to the Argentine media that he was feeling physically very well.

You know who is writing this recap, but for me he was the World’s best SG, over Billups or Navarro of Spain, the other two that can compete with him for this honor.  (It should be noted, however, that stellar roles in this cup were reserved for forwards as the tournament`s ideal 5 show: 4 of them were threes or fours). Carlos started in great shape against Germany, then had his weakest game against Australia (sadly, I believe, it was the most watched game among Brewhoopers), then he had so and so games until the first round ended: as I posted in one comment to the Serbia game, I started to doubt on him doing something different in this tourney.

But from Brazil up to Spain, things got really better. Although the comeback of center Fabricio Oberto might have helped (he was ill in the first matches), he showed a determination and a will to share the burden with Scola that grew from game to game. In all of these, Carlos was closely guarded by all teams who knew that Argentina’s offensive resources depended exclusively on what he or Scola could do.  

He had an excellent game against Brazil (a huge game for many reasons), a game that got resolved in the last seconds, with him scoring two key free throws at the end and participating in a key steal to Barbosa. His role as a capable deputy of Scola (quoting Frank here) kept growing, and in last games against Russia and Spain (his best) he turned out to be a winning factor of similar importance.  In all of these games he shared playmaking with Prigioni, moved constantly all around the perimeter and across the paint, assisted Scola and Oberto, and scored in many ways, as the following chart shows.

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Summing up, Carlos comes out of the world reinvigorated, not in physical sense, of course, but in an emotional one: he ended up playing consistently and experiencing the general approval from teammates, media and fans: there is a shared consensus that he was up to the challenge that meant replacing Ginobili and placing himself in a more stellar spot.

One of the ways his confidence showed off was in his comments after the games, some of them becoming very popular and going straight to some headlines: he described the Brazil one as a “polvo”(could be translated as a fuck, stressing the pleasure aspect of it) or the reasons to win over Russia because of the “clothes we wear” pointing his own Argentina jersey. (Usually he had the catch phrases and Scola the well thought conceptualizations, so don’t you worry for not understanding him when he talks in English: is not so different in Spanish).   

So, with or without funny quotes, hopefully a lot of this would be brought in the next days to the Bucks. I would love to continue watching him making his complementary role (again quoting Frank) a really valuable one, an asset of many resources, for the betterment of his team and teammates.