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. He remembers Wembanyama well, but he wasn’t sure he will 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 Vembanyama 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’s guarded by the two heads shorter Charles Kahudi and Vembanyama can’t score a basket. There were solutions.” Mitrovic sees improvement in his physique, but believes it would be different for Wembanyama back in the old days. “I watched San Antonio. I see muscles. 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 Vembanyama. One contact and he goes back to Paris. I preferred that kind of basketball, but I’m still old-fashioned,” Zvezdan Mitrovic concluded.
Source: EuroHoops.net
Source: EuroHoops.net
