I've got to pull for Goga, since I was just in Georgia. Nobody in the Caucasus was much interested in basketball. They're big on football, but their national team aren't good. Though one star on Arsenal is an Armenian.
I only ran into one guy who talked some basketball.
He mentioned Zaza Pachulia, and reminded me of Viktor Sanikidze. I chipped in Tornike Shengelia. Actually for such a small country there have been a fair amount of Georgians in the NBA. Vladimir Stepania, Nikoloz Tskitishvili (a #5 pick and huge bust -- career 30% FG for a 7').
I guess Zaza has been the best.
Hopefully Goga Bitadze can top that.
7' 250 with an outside stroke. Some concern about his foot speed and being able to defend the perimeter. But he's supposed to be fairly skilled. At 26, he went to play in Serbia where the competition is better and more professional.
I don't know how their hoops league is run, but in Tbilisi twice we rented a vehicle from the grey market. Once our hotel arranged a rental car from someone they often rec, but there wasn't a genuine company involved. An entirely fine Toyota Prius (hybrid) for a wine country jaunt.
The 2nd time, we rented an SUV from a big fat bald guy -- just some wrestler-looking dude on the Tbilisi street. He had 5 pretty nice-looking vehicles parked on the road in front of a genuine rental car office. The actual rental company wanted between $80 - $90 per day depending on model, while the kicker was we would have to wait an hour plus for them to bring the vehicle through Tbilisi traffic. While the fat bald "rental company" charged $45 and we took the car after about 5-10 minutes of minor prepping.
I'm not even sure he asked to see a drivers license. Maybe he did. The two page contract was some basic doc off the internet, on which he put the date, the license plate # and asked us to sign. He seemed surprised when I suggested that we actually fill in the daily rental fee on the contract. He was amenable, and I added the deposit amount I gave him. He seemed amused at how concerned I was about such formalities.
Who knows how it would have gone if we had any trouble or an accident. But it was cheap, easy, quick, and we were able to have him meet us at a return point of our choosing in the city. Actually Tbilisi is a bitch to drive in (even Georgians agreed, and Armenians think the Georgians drive like crap to boot). So we had our fat bald car company drive to our hotel where we could load our bags and take possession of the car, and I just paid him the cheap return taxi fare. When there's no company, there're no rules, and service can be pretty flexible. [For Azerbaijan, we used a very good local rental company, who let us rent the car in Baku and drop it off at the border with Georgia for an extra fee].
All of which is to say, in a rather roundabout way, I wouldn't expect the Georgian basketball league to be a model of professionalism and efficiency.
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