Photo by Tim Hart on Unsplash

At the end of the first half of the away match against Real Madrid, Zalgiris rookie Lonnie Walker showed that he had finally settled into the EuroLeague. The ex-Brooklyn player got Edy Tavares, the best center in Europe in recent years, as a rival, but he was not afraid to beat him inside, found space there, increased the advantage of the Lithuanian team, and showed the same gesture: “You are too small.”

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Walker later said that this gesture was addressed not specifically to Tavares, but to the whole of Real Madrid. They say that someone there said something to him and his Zalgiris partner after the morning throwing practice. And after that, he couldn’t “not react.”

The American guard scored 21 points in the first half. And even though he didn’t score anything else after the big break, his Zalgiris managed to get only the fourth victory over Real Madrid in its history. Andrea Trinchieri’s team returned to the EuroLeague playoff zone after an unsuccessful series of games.

Walker unexpectedly came to Europe after being released from the Celtics in mid-October. There was a lot of interest from China, but Lonnie preferred to perform at a high competitive level and prove his affiliation with the NBA.

Now he’s playing isolation in Lithuania and scaring the entire second-best league in the world. On average, he scores 14.6 points in 13 tournament matches with 43% of all shots from the game and 36.1% of three-pointers in particular. Not bad, right?

It seems that Lonnie Walker may be one of the most individually powerful players in the history of the tournament in the first half of the matches. But Trinchieri expects a balance from him and jokes that he won’t let him play at all until the big break. For now, Walker is stopping himself: slumps in the second half are already a common occurrence, as if he cannot withstand the intensity of every possession in Europe.

Just a week after the 26-year-old guard moved to Kaunas, NBA insider Mike Stein suggested that Walker would return to the NBA this season. The purchase of his contract is worth 450 thousand dollars—for the NBA clubs, it’s just a formality. They say that Denver really wants to get Walker. They and other teams have until February 20th to close the deal.

There is a feeling that such a Lonnie would not interfere with a number of teams. Even though he started terribly in the EuroLeague: 0 out of 8 from the opening game against Bayern. Now Walker praises smart basketball in the EuroLeague and tells how much he has learnt even in this short time.

Experience shows that American players return to the NBA from Europe with new knowledge and a stereo understanding of basketball. And the moment when this happens to the guard of Zalgiris looks inevitable. But finding a suitable role takes time, and we, European basketball fans, would like to see this happen after the end of this season.