By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Montenegrin coach Zvezda Mitrovic, now on the bench of Turkish Basketball Champions League team Galatasaray, was at the helm of LDLC ASVEL from 2018 to 2020.
He had a chance to work with some talented players like Theo Maledon and Matthew Strazel and faced French prodigy Victor Wembanyama at the start of his professional career with Nanterre 92.
“I’m not the kind of coach who leaves behind a wasteland. A good system was established in ASVEL. The older players, with David Lighty, were the foundation. The young ones were Maledon, Strazel… ASVEL’s best year was when I was working there, before the pandemic, when I was replaced. We were even the pleasant surprise of the EuroLeague. In Parker’s academy, there were kids I introduced one by one. Just the way I like it. That continued to thrive, and they raised the budget. However, in France, when you see a budget of 20 million, immediately cross out half. But their later moves… Allowing Wembanyama to leave, letting go of the best young players… Well, keep the gold you have,” Mitrovic said talking to Meridian Sport.
He remembers Wembanyama well, but he wasn’t sure he would become what he is today, a generational talent that the whole world is in awe of.
“I watched him even when he was a kid. A monster emerged. Thin, tall,” Mitrovic said, “Honestly, I was afraid someone would go after him, break his knees, and that’s it. If he played in our league – I won’t name names – someone would have already taken him out. He was weak and injury-prone. When I, as a coach, played against ASVEL, whenever Wembanyama was in the lineup, we won. You pull him into a pick, he’s weak, set a good screen, and that’s it. The next year, when he was in Paris, he was guarded by the two-heads shorter Charles Kahudi and Wembanyama couldn’t score a basket. There were solutions.”
Mitrovic sees improvement in his physique but believes it would have been different for Wembanyama back in the old NBA days.
“I watched San Antonio. I see muscles. But it’s not the same fight in the NBA as it used to be, now it’s all light and quick. Imagine Charles Oakley guarding Wembanyama. One contact and he goes back to Paris. I preferred that kind of basketball, but I’m still old-fashioned,” he concluded.