Turkish Coach: Enes Kanter Not Ready for the NBA


The Utah Jazz drafted Enes Kanter this summer with the third overall pick, but that’s not what Kanter’s Turkish national team coaches and teammates would have advised them to do. From Beyond the Beat: “All the coaching staff and people around basketball think that it is too early for him to go there (to the NBA),’ said Nihat Izic, an assistant head coach of the Turkey National Team. ‘He has the chance to play in the Euro League and then after that, when you feel you are ready, then you go to the NBA. He decided to go, and I’m not sure who gave him that advice. I don’t want to go there.’ Trusting Izic’s opinion on Kanter comes easily. He’s known Kanter since he was a kid growing up in Turkey and hand picked him to be groomed for the national team. It’s part of Izic’s role – to plant and cultivate talented basketball players in Turkey – since being assigned by the Turkish Commission for Youth Basketball to develop such a program in 1994.”