Jonas Valanciunas: Raptors Draft Pick Owning the U19 World Championships

During the NBA lockout, most teams fans are sad that they might not see their team play during 2011-2012.. For the Toronto Raptors, the lockout is actually a positive thing no matter how gruesome it sounds.

If the lockout was to commence and there was no NBA season, then the rumors are that each team gets their draft pick according to their regular season standings.

This would mean that the Raptors would easily acquire the third overall pick in the draft which is stockpiled with point guards and small forwards, which are two of Toronto's biggest holes right now (with the exception of Jerryd Bayless)

Now back to Jonas Valanciunas. He has been quietly tearing up the U19 FIBA Tournament. The Lithuanian big man has just been a beast in terms of scoring points and grabbing rebounds. Jonas has also been swatting balls away from the net at a very nice pace.

His most recent game against Poland, Valanciunas probably had the best game of any player in the tournament, scoring 26 points and grabbing 24 rebounds.

His wonderful performance helped the Lithuanian national team to secure a spot in the semi-finals of the tournament, the country's first appearance in the semi's.

The amazing fact is that these stats were not only for one game, but Jonas has been throwing up these kinds of numbers consistently for the entire tournament.

His tournament statistics are 21.4 PPG, 14.9 RPG and 3.7 BPG  and all of these stats come in on around 25 minutes per game.

Most people at this time are probably saying that he is only putting up these numbers like this because he is facing off against other countries and not the Americans (which is what the NBA is normally built of). If we were to go to his stats against the American team, which Lithuania has played against, then Jonas' numbers are still very impressive.

In the one game against the United States, Jonas Valanciunas scored 30 points on 55 percent shooting and grabbed 15 rebounds, pretty impressive numbers if I must say.

These statistics are very nice to see as a Raptors fan, and is the lockout is to commence, then the Raptors have Jonas ready to play on Canadian and American soil, and we also have whoever we pick in the draft.

This break will also allow players such as Jonas or DeMar DeRozan practice on areas of improvement.

With the numbers Valanciunas is putting up, I would be glad to be a Raptors fan looking towards the future.

Stats come from the official FIBA U19 Tournament website: http://latvia2011.fiba.com/pages/eng/fe/11/fu19m/p/index.html

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