Chocolate Valanciunas edges peanut butter Mirotic in tight race

REGENSBURG (David Hein’s Eye on the Future) – It’s similar to taking chocolate with your peanut butter or peanut butter with your chocolate.

Jonas Valanciunas as FIBA Europe’s Young Men’s Player of the Year 2011 or Nikola Mirotic – both are enticing young talents who look ready already to stamp their authority on any game they play.

The 19-year-old Lithuanian center Valanciunas edged out the Montenegro-born Spaniard Mirotic in both the fan and expert votes, following past winners Jan Vesely from 2010, the 2007-09 winner Ricky Rubio, Rudy Fernandez in 2006 and Nikos Zisis from 2005.

Not that Jonas’s achievements from 2011 need to be repeated, but here we go: gold medalist and MVP at the 2011 FIBA U19 World Championship; an outstanding performance with the Lithuania senior national team at EuroBasket 2011 in front of the home Lithuania crowd; he was also the fifth overall pick by the Toronto Raptors in the 2011 NBA Draft; and he had a rap song written about him.

What? A rap song? Yeah, Jonas Valanciunas has already reached iconic status in his native Lithuania – and that at age 19.

As if the hype following the U19 worlds gold medal wasn’t enough, Valanciunas created even more at EuroBasket 2011, hooking up with veteran Sarunas Jasikivecius for some of the most entertaining alley-oops in the entire tournament.

Valanciunas dominated the EuroBasket at times, such as the three-game stretch against Serbia, France and Germany in which he averaged 15 points, four rebounds and 1.7 blocks in just 19.0 minutes of action while hitting 19 of 26 shots from the field – or 73 percent.

The refreshing young big man was taking all the pressure and expectations in stride – something which could not assumed for a man of his age.

The Jonas haters – and Mirotic lovers – will come out and say the 2010-11 Euroleague Rising Star Mirotic should have received the award.

Sorry to bring up the comparison again, but this is like chocolate or peanut butter.

Both are “great tastes that taste great together” as the saying goes.

If Valanciunas is chocolate in this case, let’s call the 21-year-old Mirotic peanut butter. How can you not love the guy’s talent and skill set? And of course he would have been a deserving winner.

As mentioned, he had a great 2010-11 Euroleague season as a 19/20-year-old for Real Madrid, which saw him get a contract until the end of the 2015-16 season.

The Podgorica native, who received his Spanish passport in March 2010, was then selected with the 23rd pick in the 2011 NBA Draft and traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves and finally to the Chicago Bulls.

Mirotic’s biggest highlight internationally was putting on an MVP performance in helping hosts Spain to the gold medal at the U20 European Championship, shattering the tournament scoring record with 27 points per game as well as 10 rebounds and 1.4 blocks.

Had it not been for the rule that allows national teams to only have one naturalised player on their roster, Mirotic may have played for Spain at EuroBasket 2011 – Espana deciding instead to go with Serge Ibaka, originally from the Republic of Congo.

Of course Mirotic would have been a worthy winner of the FIBA Europe award.

But Eye on the Future would have given the award to Valanciunas because he won a world championship under the pressure of expectations over stacked teams from the United States and Serbia and then played so strongly and with such a presence at EuroBasket as a 19-year-old.

As it turned out, chocolate just barely edged out peanut butter.

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