The two players the Nets drafted and stashed in Europe will begin playing regular season games just the Nets are beginning their exhibition season.
Christian Drejer, the Nets' 2004 second round choice, begins play on October 9 in Italy's Lega A. Mile Ilic, the Nets' 2005 second round choice, begins his season on October 8 in the Goodyear Adriatic League. Ilic's team, renamed FMP Zeleznik will also play games in the pan-European ULEB Cup, starting on November 8. Both have played in preseason games, what the Europeans call "friendly" games.
Drejer, who split his summer between training for his Virtus Bologna team in Lega A and playing for his Danish National Team in Eurobasket, averaged 11.7 ppg in the three preseason games he was able to play for Virtus. He also averaged 20.3 ppg for Denmark in four Eurobasket games. In fact, this past weekend, the 22-year-old 6'9" forward wound up scoring 50 points playing for the two teams, getting 39 in the Denmark-Ireland game on Saturday and 11 in Virtus Bologna's win in the Milan History Cup championship. Both games went into overtime.
His Lega A season can be tracked at:
http://195.56.77.208/schedule/
Ilic played in the Millennium Tournament in Vrsac, Serbia earlier in the month. In those three games, spanning 48 minutes, the 21-year-old 7'2" center scored 27 points, grabbed 11 rebounds, stole the ball twice and blocked 8 shots...6 in one game. [He didn't start in any of the three games for his FMP Zeleznik. The team changed its name this summer from BC Reflex. ]
His Goodyear Adriatic season can be tracked at:
http://goodyear.adriaticbasket.com/rasporedsezone.php
His ULEB Cup season can be tracked at:
http://www.euroleague.net/ulebcup/noticia.jsp?temporada=E04&jornada=32&id=308
Both Virtus Bologna--in Italian--and FMP Zeleznik--in Serbian--have websites. The FMP Zeleznik site is still under construction.
The Virtus site can be found at:
http://www.virtus.it
The FMP Zeleznik site can be found at:
http://www.kk-fmp.net/