By Antonis Stroggylakis/ info@eurohoops.net
The hunt for a guard is still on for a heavily injury-plagued Barcelona. With Pau Ribas out for the season and Juan Carlos Navarro still at the pits, the Spanish club is intensely scanning the market for free agents, or not, able to join the team and adapt quickly to its demands.
As head coach Giorgos Bartzokas admitted, Argentinian veteran Pablo Prigioni’s case appears attractive to his team. “Every guard in the market with European passport interests us. Prigioni, with his great career and potential is one of them. But the most important thing is to bring a player that fits into our system. It’s not just about the potential, quality or level of the player. It’s about whether he fits with us and whether he’s able to play well with our players.”
Prigioni isn’t simply identified as… “experienced”, but more like incredibly seasoned in Liga Endesa (and Euroleague), where he spent probably the halcyon days of his professional career, mainly as a player of Baskonia.
The need for a perimeter player can be described as “urgent”, but the Greek coach said that acquiring him remains a work in progress. For reasons that also have to do with… the football department of the club. “I’m not involved in the negotiations. I’d rather you ask the club and our press officers. The situation is difficult since overall the club’s priority is to renew Lionel Messi. I’m joking. They are doing a good job. We must find a player who will help us in the upcoming nine months. We must be patient.”
“It’s true that we have serious candidates in our list but we don’t want to names because it’s very difficult to sign players who have contracts with other teams. I don’t know if we’ll have someone in 7-10 days. I don’t know. We hope to have Juan Carlos Navarro back with us very soon. Finding a player who will adapt to our systems is not easy,” he explained.