By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Sacramento Kings secured their third straight victory after not such a great start to the season. The return of De’Aaron Fox is definitely helping, but Sasha Vezenkov also keeps producing.
Head coach of the Kings, Mike Brown, wasn’t sure whether Vezenkov would have a role within the second team before the season started, but the Bulgarian forward keeps showing he can be very useful. Especially with Fox in the team.
Vezenkov scored 11 points on 4/6 shooting, and 3/5 from beyond the arc, all without dribbling too much, in a 132-120 win over Cleveland Cavaliers. Sasha is being Sasha.
“I think he is having more fun. I feel like he is starting to enjoy himself. And obviously, he is making shots, and I feel like that just kind of takes a weight off your back. You can see that he is having joy in playing basketball right now. That’s great for him, and that’s great for us,” Fox said about Vezenkov.
Coach Brown provided an in-depth analysis of Vezenkov’s performance, saying he’s getting better as he gets more opportunities to play.
“Sasha has a great feel for the game of basketball on both ends. He hit a couple of big shots, and to have a guy like that on the floor gives everybody else a lot of room. It makes teams have to think twice about rotating to someone else, so guys are going to get wide-open shots just because of his presence. He does a lot of little things. He had a three on the opposite corner of Cleveland’s bench because he ran hard to that corner, beat the defense down, and put them in a predicament. It doesn’t show up in the stat sheet, but when you run that hard and to the spot, like we preach, good things happen for everybody. His ability to rebound in traffic, because he’s a big, physical guy, is really good. The more he plays, it seems the better he’s gotten for us. Defensively, he understands angles, he’s able to take a hit, and he works really hard, and I think the sky is the limit for him. He’s starting to get his groove with the more minutes that he gets,” Brown said.