By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Brooklyn Nets rookie Rodions Kurucs described how his grandfather led him to pursue a career in professional basketball from a very young age.
Kurucs, grandfather, Vladimir Kiselovs urged his grandson to begin basketball at five years old. And the only way to do that was to train with older kids. It wasn’t easy but the end result paid off.
Per Nets.com:
Rodions Kurucs began playing basketball at the age of five with a group of seven-year-olds. Why not with youngsters his own age? Because there was no organized basketball for five-year-olds in Cesis, the Latvian town of fewer than 20,000 people in which he grew up.
Why not wait until he was seven? Not an option. Not with his grandfather, Vladimirs Kiselovs, a basketball lifer and venerated coach in Latvia.
“He had two sons that they finished their careers very fast,” said Kurucs. “He wanted us to succeed. So he said, ‘you’ll be a basketball player.’ We didn’t have any choice. But we loved it.”
The “we” includes younger brother Arturs, who also played two years up for his entire childhood, because that was the age difference between he and Rodions.”
For eight years, the trio was a unit. His grandfather, who came of age in the time of Soviet domination of the region, could be a hard-driving coach.
“I mean, we had a lot of fights,” said Kurucs. “A lot of tears. That was crazy. I still remember all those times now. He was working with me and with my brother. He worked more with me, but my brother always was behind me and trying to do the things I do. I maybe had more talent, but he worked, he had a lot to prove. He proved a lot with his work that he put in the game.”
Photo: @BrooklynNets