There just aren’t many basketball journeys quite like the one of Ersan Ilyasova.
When Ilyasova was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks with the 36th overall selection of the 2005 NBA Draft, he stood in the shadow of the Bucks nabbing Australian big man Andrew Bogut with the first pick that year. It also didn’t help that Ilyasova suffered a broken ankle midway through the 2004-05 season with Fenerbahce in Turkey that added plenty of intrigue at a time when international scouting in the NBA wasn’t to the level it is today.
But it was the scouting that Bucks director of player personnel Dave Babcock had previously done on Ilyasova that swayed the Bucks to take the Turkish international as he told Charlie Bury of Draft Express back in April of 2006:
“Well what happened with him is two years ago, almost three years now, I saw him at a junior tournament in Spain, and he was just tremendous.