Are you a rising star? NBA calls!

By Leferis Moutis/ moutis@eurohoops.net

The Euroleague’s award “Rising star” means a lot of things. But lately turned it out to be a golden ticket to the NBA! This summer two ex winners, Mirotic and Papanikolaou signed there and Bogdan Bogdanovic hopes to this tradition as he says on Eurohoops.

The six out of the last seven winners of the award “Euroleague rising star” played in the NBA. The only one who is the exception of the rule since 2006 is Novica Velickovic. The Serbian forward won this award five years ago as player of Partizan, was undrafted and due to many injuries he didn’t evolve as expected.

Erazem Lorbek, the first winner, also didn’t play in the NBA. The Slovenian forward was drafted by Indiana Pacers in 2005 but he spent his best years of his career in the Euroleague having a big contract with Barcelona.

Andrea Bargnani traveled to the NBA some months after his election as “Rising star”, but he is the only one who did that. Rudy Fernandez, Ricky Rubio and Kostas Papanikolaou made the leap one year after the award. Nikola Mirotic is the only who was the best young player in the Euroleague for two seasons in a row (2011 and 2012) and travelled overseas this summer, two years after his last title.

The last winner of the “Rising Star” award is Bogdan Bogdanovic. Eurohoops informed about this “tradition” and said: “For me this is only statistics, numbers. But I hope I will not ruin this tradition and continue the road last Rising stars went”.

The Serbian guard signed this summer a four-year contract with Fenerbahce and will earn around 1.1 mil. euros per season. There is of course NBA out clause in his contract with the Turkish team in the summer 2016 and Phoenix Suns drafted him this summer and for sure they will watch him carefully.