Today is opening night for the new-look, 2013-14 Brooklyn Nets. Since Nets forward Tornike Shengelia ( in his native Georgian: თორნიკე შენგელია) is inactive tonight (a victim of the numbers game and off-season knee surgery) for the Nets opener against the Cavs, we present to you a mix for Shengelia AKA The Tokomotive AKA TokoLoko AKA The Lebron James of the D-League.
Now this isn't a mix of Toko NBA highlights. For starters, there aren't that many of those, as Toko only played 93 games in the Association last year. It also isn't a D-League highlight reel, though Shengelia did thoroughly dominate the NBA's minor league in his intermittent, 10 game tenure last season on the Springfield Armor.
No, even that would be too mainstream.
It's a mix from Toko's adolescent days plying his trade in the Spanish minor league, Liga Española de Baloncesto Amateur (EBA), on Valencia BC Sunny Delight from 2008-2010. While current Nets teammates Tyshawn Taylor and Mason Plumlee played in front of raucous home crowds at Allen Fieldhouse and Cameron Indoor, respectfully, Toko left his home in the former Soviet Union to ball in front of empty crowds in glorified Spanish high school gyms.
It's three to five years later, but fans of the D-League and NBA garbage time will find the Toko they sort-of know but definitely love in this mix. Shengelia is the epitome of the basketball bromide, "high motor," as we see in the play at 0:20 in, when the Tokomotive misses a rebound on the offensive glass, only to hustle down and breakup the fastbreak; or at 1:12, when Toko tracks down a would-be easy fastbreak layup and swats it away in patented King James fashion.
We also find the same seemingly out-of-control-but-effective drives to the basket (0:37; 1:05) and deceptive post moves (0:50) that made Shengelia a star of the 2012 NBA Summer League and earned him an underdog spot on the Brooklyn Nets inaugural roster in 2012-13. Shengelia is only the seventh Georgian national to make an NBA roster, and one of only two active players, along with the Bucks Zaza Pachulia.
And dunks. We have dunks. Alley-oop dunks (0:45), rim-shaking two-handed dunks (2;07) and even slow-motion fast-break And-1 dunks (1:40). Throw it down, teenage Toko, throw it down.
As for the music, it's the instrumental version of "Black-and-Yellow," rapper Wiz Khalifa's 2010 hit about his bumble-bee colored car that became an anthem-of-sorts for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Keeping with the Euro theme of this post, the beat was produced for Khalifa by Norwegian duo Stargate. It's an oft used sample in hip-hop, with my favorite appropriation of the beat coming in MC Lars (featuring MC Frontalot)' 2011 song "Black and Yellow T-Shirts" about making it in the indie-rap game on Indie Rocket Science.
So enjoy the Nets opening night game and remember to check out The Brooklyn Game's mega-2013-14 preview, which includes my ranking the best Nets starting lineups in franchise history.
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