By Kostas Giataganas/ info@eurohoops.net
Russia, China, Greece and now Spain. Over the last three years, Chris Singleton has been changing teams steadily, however the element that remains a constant is his reliability and, in fact, at a very high level.
For other players, the question may be to rack up enough appearances for some bonus or their contract itself, but in the case of the forward who played for Panathinaikos and who will now play for Barcelona, there are barely any absences one can find in his record, at a time when the strain at a high level has gone through the roof.
Eurohoops documents the 29-year-old American’s unstoppable course, from the NBA, to the Olympic Sports Center Athens and the Palau Blaugrana in Barcelona, at the team he hopes to help return to the elite of the EuroLeague.
Florida and the NBA
Born in Canton, Georgia, he went through Florida State’s college basketball program (2008-2011), where he played for the Seminoles for three years, under the instructions of the longest serving and multi-winner for that particular institution coach, Leonard Hamilton.
In 2011, Singleton considered himself ready for the NBA and registered for the draft, where the Wizards selected him with the 18th overall pick and opened the door of the magical world for him.
From 2011 to 2014, he played in the colors of Washington, where he counted 66 and 57 appearances in the first two years, averaging 4.6 and 4.1 points respectively, though his third season was… jinxed, as he missed the first two months due to a fractured metatarsal of the left leg.
As a result, after his return he wasn’t able to really find a spot on the roster, and with only 25 appearances, at the beginning of the 2014/2015 season he found himself in China and the Jiangsu Dragons and then the G-League with the Oklahoma City Blue, making the decision to take a look at Europe too.
Berlin with Bartzokas and Lokomotiv
In the 2015/2016 season, the Florida State graduate was introduced to European basketball through his collaboration with Georgios Bartzokas’s Lokomotiv, being one of the main ingredients of an excellent mix that pleasantly surprised and shook the EuroLeague.
In just their second appearance in the EuroLeague, Lokomotiv found the way to have one of the most competitive squads in the competition and go all the way to the Final Four in Berlin by knocking out Barcelona – then coached by Xavi Pascual, who will now coach Singleton in Panathinaikos – with two breaks and 3-2 wins in the playoffs.
The American was a protagonist of that series and the MVP of the qualification “final,” with 16 points, 12 rebounds and a ranking of 27 in Game 5 in Krasnodar, a performance that was even better than his debut against… Panathinaikos in Russia, where he’d chalked up 16 points, 9 rebounds and a ranking of 21 and displayed his credentials to Europe for the first time.