National coach sends ex-Atlanta Hawks wing a message in EuroBasket final

The Atlanta Hawks were represented by ex-players right up until the last day of the tournament. Dennis Schroder led the German national team to third place with an All-Star five performance. Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot on the other hand was not anywhere near as good.

He struggled through the group stages of the tournament before bringing out his best in the tournament’s knockout phase. However, there was always the issue that whenever TLC hit the court, the French would lose part of their advantage on the scoreboard.

In all but two games of the tournament, TLC has had a negative impact on the box score. There was one group game where he had a plus-three impact and then there was the semi-final where he had a plus 19 impact. This is not good enough for a fringe NBA-level player.

So what message did the national coach send to ex-Atlanta Hawks wing Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot?

Well, in the final the French national coach only gave TLC less than five minutes of game time. in that time he collected a single rebound and also turned the ball over once. However, where things went really wrong for him was that TLC had a minus nine impact on the box score which was a significant contributor to the French losing by 12 points.

To put it simply the French head coach said that enough was enough. He could not afford to use TLC in the game due to his inability to keep the French on the positive side of the ledger when he was on the court.

As discussed in previous articles, if TLC wanted to use EuroBasket as an audition for an NBA training camp it would be surprising if any teams looked at him now. Schroder had the talent and used this platform to run it back with the Los Angeles Lakers.

Unless there is a team desperately looking for a wing it feels unlikely that TLC will get a call from any NBA front office given his performance. One thing is almost certain, the Atlanta Hawks are extremely unlikely to re-sign TLC.