Enes Kanter, the wunderkind from Turkey who stunned everyone with his consistently dominant play during the FIBA U18 European Championship Men tournament, starts his senior year of high school today at Findlay College Prep in Henderson (neighbor of Las Vegas), Nevada — thereby passing up multi-million euro offers from Euroleague franchises and interestingly taking the mirror-opposite path of Jeremy Tyler.
As if Findlay really needed the best 17-year-old basketball player on The Continent to augment its squad. In 2008-09, the private school finished 33-0 behind Avery Bradley (to play 2009-10 for University of Texas) and Carlos Lopez (now with UNLV and Team Puerto Rico), taking the National High School Basketball Championship as well.
There’s even a documentary about the team entitled “The Season” by independent filmmaker Donnie Seals. Here’s episode one.
(More epissodes from Findlay College Prep’s glorious “Season” is available at TheSeason.wordpress.com.)
Findlay’s roster for the 2009-10 season includes – in addition to Kanter, mind you – Team Canada’s Cory Joseph and Tristan Thompson; Nigerian power forward Godwin Okonji, and Drazen Petrovic’s nephew Marko Petrovic, to name a few.