Todd Zafirovski

[JNort]

Why is nobody talking about this on the forums? He just got named to the Macedonian basketball team.

[weezie]

I think it's great! What a blast of a way to spend your summer. Sure beats trudging through an internship somewhere.
I met his parents last year in Charlotte, very nice people.
Good luck Todd!

[SupaDave]

Why is nobody talking about this on the forums? He just got named to the Macedonian basketball team.

That just sounds funny.

So let's see just who this Macedonian team is...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_national_basketball_team

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz1DuBTzRUQ

These guys are pretty crunk. I'm loving the opportunity for Todd. Looks to me like they are trying to load up for a run by any means allowable.

[CrazyNotCrazie]

If you look at their roster, one of these things clearly is not like the others - a guy named Bo McCalebb somehow was also granted Macedonian citizenship and is the star of the team, though I'm guessing that 10 years ago he couldn't point out Macedonia on a map (nor can I).

No offense to Todd, but a coach would have had to go to a lot of Duke games to see him play and get a sense of his abilities...

[detule]

If you look at their roster, one of these things clearly is not like the others - a guy named Bo McCalebb somehow was also granted Macedonian citizenship and is the star of the team, though I'm guessing that 10 years ago he couldn't point out Macedonia on a map (nor can I).

Not sure how familiar you are with European basketball, but naturalized players are a commonplace.

McCalebb is a star point-guard and perhaps one of the best playmakers playing in Europe currently. Macedonia is a small country with very passionate fans. Beating Lithuania in the Euro Basket quarter finals last year put them on the map for a lot of people.

[burnspbesq]

Josh Coveleski, who hardly ever played at Duke, suited up for Poland at the last world championships in lax, and ended up as the tounament's leading scorer.

Not sure I see any downside for Zaf in pursuing this, so long as it doesn't affect his eligibility.

[Cameron]

Why is nobody talking about this on the forums?

Like Macedonia is an actual place..

According to Wikipedia, this fictional national team starts a player named Vodjan Stojanovski. That kind of sounds like Peja Stojakovic, so that's something. That's got to be worth a basket or two during big games.

On an interesting side note, before being formed as its own entity in the early 1990s the Macedonia team used to be part of the old Yugoslavia national team. This, of course, means that the tiny country of Macedonia has at least a partial connection to one of the more talented basketball squads ever assembled in the history of the world game; that being those late '80s Yugoslavian national teams that featured Drazen Petrovic, Vlade Divac and Toni Kukoc. Think about that lineup. What a team. The Dream Team it may have been not, but this group of players, especially the great Petrovic, along with other overseas stars of the day such as Arvydas Sabonis, really helped usher in the popularity and skill of the Euro game in the States and changed the way we play the sport.

I was much too young, but I would absolutely have loved to have seen Sabonis in his prime. They say he had the presence of Chamberlain and the eyes of Magic. Had it not been for the constant physical maladies and an unfortunately late start in the NBA, Sabonis very well might have been the greatest big man to ever play the game. You could see traces of it when he ran with the Blazers, but his game was obviously not what it had once been.

Anyway, congratulations to Todd.