Malcolm Delaney’s departure from Barcelona was not, to say the least, on good terms. The point guard arrived at the Barça club before the explosion of the coronavirus pandemic to make up for the loss of Thoms Heurtel, but did not have the desired prominence. And he blamed Svetislav Pesic, his coach when he was a member of Bayern Munich and with whom he won a Bundesliga. All this was unimportant when Delaney arrived in Barcelona. Before the season concluded he was cut by the team for not showing up for training. The player had gone to the United States with permission from the club to spend the quarantine there. And, of course, she didn’t come back.
In the days after his departure, some of the reasons for it were discovered. In fact, it was Delaney himself who assured that he was not happy at the club: “He was the only point guard on the squad and he was not a starter“, he assured. Until the break due to the coronavirus pandemic, Delaney played 19 games in the Endesa League (6 starters) with an average of 10.3 points, 3.6 assists and 1.8 rebounds in 22 minutes. In the Euroleague he played 26 games (6 starters) with an average of 10.2 points, 4.6 assists and 2.2 rebounds also in 22 minutesshowing great regularity. But it never fully entered into the plans of a Pesic who moved the rotation a lot and did not have the point guard as much as he would like.
Some time later, Delaney, who is now an Armani Milan player, spoke again about what happened at Barça. “There, there was a constant fight against modern basketball. Pesic was old school, Serbian. He did not like the modern style of NBA basketball. Talking to Messina is totally different than before“, assured the player in statements collected by Basket Newsand that once again show that the problems between coach and player were a constant during the player’s brief period in Barcelona.
Delaney, who has recounted how these events led him to consider his departure from Barcelona and his subsequent signing for Milan, He is one of the most respected players in the EuroLeague. Born in 1989, he has experience in the NBA (he played from 2016 to 2018 at the Hawks) and is a fundamental pillar at Armani Milan, where he defends the point guard position alongside Sergio Rodríguez while he is in a team that occupies fourth place in the maximum continental competition (16-8) and who aspires to conquer it. Delaney also has experience in the Final Four, in which he participated in 2015when he was in the ranks of Lokomotiv.