Nemanja Bjelica Looking Like He'll Be the Real Deal Upon NBA Arrival

We can't yet know if Serbian star Nemanja Bjelica is ready for the NBA, but his work in the 2015 FIBA Eurobasket tournament makes it clearer than ever that he's got nothing left to prove internationally.

Bjelica led Serbia to a semifinal tilt against Lithuania with tournament averages of 14.1 points, 6.6 rebounds and 2.6 assists on 59.2 percent shooting from the field. Though Lithuania advanced with a 67-64 win, the result doesn't detract from a sterling overall effort by Bjelica.

Those stats are all the more impressive because Bjelica didn't fun them up as his club's sole option; Miroslav Raduljica has NBA games on his resume and Milos Teodosic was the Euroleague MVP in the 2009-10 season. The latter will be highly sought-after by NBA teams when his contract with CSKA Moscow expires in 2017.

Bjelica is standing out among, well...standouts. And any doubts about where he sat on the Serbian basketball hierarchy disappeared much earlier in the tournament when he was the man to take the last shot against Germany.

It turned out well.

That's a 6'10" forward hitting a game-winning floater, by the way. Consider it proof Bjelica's game is far from ordinary. No wonder the Minnesota Timberwolves made his lifelong dream a reality by officially signing him this past summer.

It took him a while to reach this point, though. Drafted by the Washington Wizards with the 35th overall pick in 2010 (and promptly traded to the Timberwolves), Bjelica played everywhere from Austria to Spain to Turkey in his early 20s.

His last two seasons with Turkish powerhouse Fenerbahce may have only drawn the attention of international hoops devotees, but a much wider American audience finally got to appreciate Bjelica's growth when he led Serbia in scoring against Team USA in the 2014 FIBA World Cup Finals...while also getting in an early slam on DeMarcus Cousins.

Last season with Fenerbahce, Bjelica earned Euroleague MVP honors with averages of 11.9 points and 8.6 rebounds per game.

The numbers and awards indicate it's time for Bjelica to move on to bigger challenges. But it's the specifics of his game that give him a great chance to meet those challenges with the Wolves this season.

In an NBA increasingly obsessed with offensive spacing, multi-skilled players and ball movement, Bjelica fits in perfectly. At 6'10", his feel and spatial sense stand out. No wonder Draft Express called him "essentially a point guard trapped in a power forward's body" way back in its initial analysis of his game in 2010.

Though he's not a deadly three-point shooter, Bjelica is certainly good enough to draw attention beyond the arc. He shot 41.6 percent from deep in 2013-14, then followed it up with 35.1 percent in his MVP season last year. Defenses will have no choice but to honor him out there, and any overly aggressive closeouts will open things up for Bjelica's strong off-the-dribble game.

Timberwolves fans should be excited for the highlights Bjelica's handle and creativity will generate.

Though it's not much of a compliment these days to compare a player to Hedo Turkoglu, Bjelica bears a favorable similarity to a younger version of the 15-year veteran. The long strides, the legitimate guard skills, the clever change of pace and the itchy pull-up trigger finger are all there, and you can't watch a play like this without at least thinking of Turkoglu:

If anything, Bjelica's bulkier frame and higher defensive activity level make him an even more intriguing and versatile prospect than Turkoglu was over a decade ago.

It seems Timberwolves head coach Flip Saunders recognizes the options Bjelica presents, as he explained to reporters back in July:

"

He's a basketball player. I'm not going to label him with a position, a 3 or a 4. I'm going to label him as a player. He's different than a lot of the players that we have, and when we talked a lot about him coming here, one of the big things was that he's different...he can handle the basketball, he can shoot the three, he can move around the floor, he can run pick-and-rolls, and we really don't have anyone at his size that can do that.

"

The Wolves don't have anyone else with Bjelica's combination of skill and size, but they have plenty of bodies blocking his path to the rotation all the same. Andrew Wiggins and Shabazz Muhammad will occupy plenty of minutes at small forward, while Kevin Garnett, Adreian Payne and even Anthony Bennett will eat up time at power forward. Toss in Karl-Anthony Towns, Nikola Pekovic and Gorgui Dieng at the 5, and you've got a serious logjam up front.

If we adopt a glass-half-full approach, that positional glut creates another opportunity for a flattering comparison.

Nikola Mirotic followed up a strong European run by joining the Chicago Bulls as a 23-year-old rookie last season. Of similar size, featuring a similar game and facing a similarly loaded frontcourt rotation ahead of him, Mirotic carved out minutes anyway.

David Banks/Associated Press

It's not a perfect comparison, as Bjelica is significantly older than Mirotic (he's already 27), and the Timberwolves frontcourt isn't quite as riddled with proven veteran talent as Chicago's was. But with a longer track record and an easier path to the top of the depth chart, it's not crazy to suggest Bjelica could match Mirotic's production of a year ago—when the 6'10" forward made the NBA All-Rookie First Team.

Which brings us to this intriguing tidbit from Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN in Minneapolis:

It's safe to say the Wolves have reason to be excited about their first-year players, including those not named Towns or Tyus Jones.

Bjelica brings experience uncommon in a rookie, a game uncommon for a player his size and versatility uncommon on the Wolves' current roster.

Hopefully his presence leads to something else uncommon in Minnesota: winning.

Follow Grant Hughes on Twitter @gt_hughes.