McIntyre has gone global

I don’t always blog about Euroleague basketball.

But when I do, I prefer it to be when the only other timely thing left to write about is college baseball.

In the wake of the NFL draft and a couple of solid alumni showings at the Quail Hollow PGA golf tourney last weekend, dare I suggest that the most interesting man in the world right now, as it relates to Clemson athletics, is former standout point guard Terrell McIntyre.

The 31-year-old McIntyre, the only four-time team MVP in program history (1995-99), was named Saturday to the first-team All-Euroleague squad for the second straight year.

That’s a pretty doggone impressive feat.

(Tuesday correction: The original post said McIntyre had been first-team all-Euroleague three times. I’ve since been corrected by a Euroleague official. Little did I know that this blog was read by anyone outside the state, much less gone global, too).

If the Olympic basketball competitions and other FIBA events did nothing else the last decade, they proved that basketball is played at a high level in many countries other than the U.S., and that the NBA is simply an entirely different brand of hoops where athleticism and strength is valued to a much greater degree.

Two pros viewed as valuable contributors to their NBA clubs last year, Josh Childress and Jannero Pargo, bolted to Euroleague last offseason in order to make substantially more money. And both wound up perceived as busts because they barely were able to crack their teams’ rotations this season.

For some context, Euroleague play is where NBA scouts took notice of Manu Ginobili, Andres Nocioni and Luis Scola, not to mention Vlade Divac, Dino Radja, Drazen Petrovic and Arvydas Sabonis back in the day.

The league’s past three “Rising Star” award winners – Danilo Gallinari, Rudy Fernandez and Andrea Bargnani — have all gone on to be high NBA draft picks or, in Fernandez’s case, be a prominent acquisition for the Portland Trail Blazers once he finally opted to give the NBA a try. (This year’s Rising Star was 22-year-old Novica Velickovic, a 6-9, 240-pound Serbian small forward whom NBA scouts supposedly see as being a subpar athlete but a potential second-round draft-and-follow).

Since the All-Euroleague teams were created in 2001, only three players have made the first team more than twice (each has made it three times):

• Juan Carlos Navarro — this year’s MVP, who spent last year with the Memphis Grizzlies before jumping back overseas for muchos dolares.

• Dejan Bodiroga – a retired 6-8 wing known as “White Magic,” he was drafted in the second round by Sacramento a year before they took a flier on Peja Stojakovic. Bodiroga, though, opted to shirk the NBA.

• Nikola Vujcic – an aging, finesse 6-11 center who shunned his chances to bolt to the NBA as a free agent because he could remain a star where he was.

McIntyre, a 5-foot-, um,-9 or so point guard from Raeford, N.C., averaged 17.3 points and 4.4 assists per game in 19 games for Montepaschi Siena (Italy).

Those numbers might appear modest, but they’re dynamic by Euroleague standards because games are shorter and the pace of play is slower/more methodical.

Euroleague has a fascinating format that breeds intense play (which is all battery-throwing crowds need, right?). There are 24 teams, everyone is split into divisions and they play each other twice for a total of 10 games. Then finalists are pared down to a top 16, quarterfinal round, and finally a Final Four – so the top two teams played a total of just 23 games.

McIntyre scored the league’s most points in a single game (35) during the season in his team’s playoff elimination loss and finished the league’s second-leading scorer behind Isor Rakocevic (17.95), a 2000 second-round draft pick who had brief stints with Minnesota and San Antonio from 2002-04. McIntyre also led the league in player performance rating, however that’s calculated.

(Tuesday update: the Euroleague official says the rating is the sum total of all positive statistical values (points scored, rebounds, assists, blocks, fouls drawn) minus negative statistical values (missed shots, turnovers committed, fouls committed).)

McIntyre was the only American-born player on the first- and second-team All-Euro squads, which likewise says speaks to how favorably he is looked upon over there.

He was joined on the first-team by Navarro, Rakocevic, Ioannis Bourousis and Nikola Pekovic. Both Bourousis and Pekovic have been on the NBA’s radar for 2-3 years, but neither has shown any significant interest in making the jump because so many European stars have come over and wasted a year of their careers on the bench.

Which brings us back to McIntyre.

He’ll be a free agent this summer and theoretically could give the NBA one more try (he spent three years in the D-League from 2001-03, but the closest he came to making the NBA was getting cut by New Orleans in a preseason).

But McIntyre reportedly was in high demand by several of the richest of clubs last year, except that a huge buyout in his contract precluded him from jumping ship.

This year’s champion, Panathinaikos (Greece), supposedly tried to acquire him last year with a $1.5 million (Euros) offer in addition to paying his $1 million buyout. According to a conversion Web site, that would translate into a nearly $2 million American salary and $1.3 million buyout.

Not too shabby for someone who’d piddled in the French and German leagues out of college and had to work his way up the Italian league ranks just a few years ago.

Try getting that money in any U.S. job in the current economy.

Stay overseas, my friend.