Real Madrid won the seventh victory in nine games played in the Euroleague season with a triumph somewhat suffered against Zalgiris, an unprecedented bottom player, and did so with good minutes from several players: Yabusele, Poirier, Heurtel, Llull or Rudy were the best against a courageous team, the Lithuanian, who remains at zero at the bottom of the leaderboard. Laso’s men are still with casualties and, despite the fact that Núñez did not play minutes without Carlos Alocén or Nigel Williams-Goss being available, there was time for the youth personifying it in Tristan Vukcevic, who gains presence in what Randolph and Thompkins debut in this season after having been operated on in the previous one for injuries.
In the last mock draft from ESPN they place the 33rd to Vukcevic. It is below others from Europe, such as Jean Montero and Khalifa Diop (owned by Granca), Nikola Jovic (Mega) or Yannick Nzosa (Unicaja).
Vukcevic had eight minutes to try to do his best. And stood out. He had some marking errors that Lukas Lekavicius took advantage of almost exclusively, but he finished with 7 points and 3 rebounds. The best thing for him was a kill in contact with another young man, Marek Blazevic, which became the play of the day in the competition and which, being a moment of the magnitude that it was, helps to see himself among the scouts with some more possibilities heading into the summer of 2022 and a possible departure to the US.
NBA scouts in Madrid
At the WiZink Center there was, as a great attraction for television cameras, Sean Marks, the head of the Nets at the sports level since his position as general manager. But he was not the only one who was in the house and who has a direct relationship with the NBA. A former Real Madrid player who now works for the Denver Nuggets, Martynas Pocius, was also in the match against the representative of his country in the Euroleague. The two took note of Vukcevic.
Marks has elevated the Nets in a way like no other, from passing the penalties for the transfer with the Celtics that sank them in the East table to being seen as a favorite for the title after signing Harden, Irving and Durant for the work in the offices of this New Zealander who knows the European market well. Brooklyn has bet these years on Rodions Kurucs or Dzanan Musa, even if they did not go well, and last year he rescued Mike James from CSKA to alleviate the injuries of the final part of the season. On the other hand, Pocius works assistant personnel director at the Nuggets, formerly as a scout at the foot of the piste, and it was crucial to bet on the signing of Facu Campazzo exactly one year ago.