Obscure NBA Player of the Week: Mirza Teletovic

In a continuing effort to increase the volume of posts on Volume Shooters, we will be adding a number of "weekly features" which appear on a regular basis. One such feature, debuting today, is the "Obscure NBA Player of the Week," meant to highlight a player that doesn't get much burn for his current team, but is noteworthy for one reason or another. Usually, he is noteworthy because he is somehow hilarious.

This week's obscure NBA player is this guy:



Yes, folks, the one and only Mirza Teletovic! Here's what you need to know about Mirza:


Country of Origin: Bosnia

Vitals: 6'9" / 255 lbs (or 2.06m / 116 kg for those of you Bosnians with Mirza Teletovic Google Alerts)

Position: SF/PF

Nickname: MTV. You pretty much can't beat that.

Career Arc: Teletovic began his career in 2002 at the age of 17 with the notable Bosnian club KK Sloboda Tuzla, a 7-time Bosnian Super-Cup winner which hilariously went bankrupt in 2011 (again, for those fluent in Bosnian, the official KK Sloboda Tuzla home page). After that, he played 3 years in Belgium and 6 in Spain, where last year he made the All-ACB first team after averaging 21.7 points and 6 boards per game. The Spanish league is widely considered the second best league in the world, so Teletovic was offered a contract by the mad Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov to play for the Nets (for some reason he entered the draft after the 2007 season in which he averaged 5.3 points a game. Needless to say, he went undrafted - but he was still probably better than Greg Oden right??? It's possible he was riding on the backs of the only 2 Spanish players drafted that year, Marc Gasol and Rudy Fernandez, both of whom played well upon arriving in the U.S.).

Buck-est Teletovic Mixtape Available on YouTube:

He doesn't look bad here right? Although his game somewhat resembles Andrea Bargnani lite - never a flattering comparison - he has some vicious throwdowns starting around 0:45 of the video.

Notable Moments in his NBA Career: So far, sadly only this unfortunate sequence in a recent game against the Pistons.

I especially enjoyed how he blows on his hands after the first attempt, then does the same thing on the next 2 possessions.

Will he ever make the big time? He should be just about in the prime of his career right now, so if nothing happens this year, its unlikely he will improve much. At the same time, the dude clearly has game, not to mention about 1200% more shooting range than the current Nets starting PF, Reggie Evans. Don't be surprised if "MTV" has at least one moment in the NBA spotlight before it's all said and done.

Please submit comments, questions, and recommendations for next week's Obscure NBA Player to pabritton42@gmail.com.