After a whirlwind of changes of mind, both in the clubs and on the part of the player, the fight to get Mario Hezonja has ended.. He will continue at Real Madrid, as previously reported https://twitter.com/tjcope/status/1802438022685946250, with a multi-year contract. The negotiation, according to https://twitter.com/blasradio/status/1802456424221462597has orbited around one of five seasons.
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Hezonja, who has been in the white ship for two years, sees his relationship expanding, just as has happened to Walter Tavares. He will continue in a squad that this season has bordered on perfection: first position and record in the Euroleague, although they finished as runners-up, and winners of the League, Cup and Super Cup.
The main problem with this decision is all the suffering it has caused. The 29-year-old player had an agreed agreement with Barcelona, the team that formed him before embarking on an adventure in the NBA that did not turn out as expected, and will not be reflected in anything else. After winning the League in Murcia the Croatian said the following: “I’m that perfectionist. This year we have only lost the game we played badly and we have lost a title. I feel very bad about this, but I would like to give back to our people, to my club, to Real Madrid… In the coming years I would like to give this back with many more titles. I hope it happens”. With this, a Barça spokesperson had to come out to deny that there was a contract signed with the Balkan player, in a nod to a fan who did not see the sentiment of someone who wanted to jump to the eternal rival endorsed in those words. The house of cards has fallen and Mario has chosen Madrid.
Hezonjawith a changing character and extremely ambitious since he was in the Barcelona youth academy, has managed to embrace an improvement in his contract, which he requested after becoming one of Chus Mateo’s indispensable players in the forward position, playing on several wings, also with Panathinaikos.
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The intention of the Croatian, who forms an external pair of brates with the Bosnian Dzanan Musa who is capital for Madrid’s near future, it was a tug of war but with Madrid as a priority. For this reason, after the Final Four he approached the renewal position again knowing that he still had other offers (also the siren songs from the NBA) on the table. A definitive rapprochement has occurred in the last few hours as Mario is aware of the constant wanderings of this negotiation..
From Barça to Madrid -with the NBA in the middle-
After winning the Euroleague last summer, there were rumors that he could leave, but Hezonja made it clear that he would fulfill the second year of his contract in Madrid while the green shadow of Panathinaikos lengthened. Then, Barça appeared on the scene, a return with a lot of curiosity due to his stopover in Madrid and because it did not sit well with him that the club did not have him when he decided to leave the NBA. He had been a Barça player since 2012, when after winning the Junior Euroleague with Zagreb he signed for three seasons. As a Barça player, he was elected Rising Star of the LEB Oro with the reserve team, and later took steps in the first team under the guidance of Xavi Pascual, with whom it ended up being rumored that he had not had a good relationship, which they ended having communication problems. The Dubrovnik coach has denied it and Hezonja also made it clear in an interview for this newspaper that he had not had any trouble with the Gavá player: “Things always went very well with him, he helped me a lot, he talked to me as much as he could and I never stopped learning. A great coach with a lot of authority in the club and that suited me well.”.
At Barça he left flashes of superclass without, still very young, continuity. In a game against Manresa (February 2015) he scored 8/8 in triples. In the 2014-15 Euroleague he averaged 7.7 points and 2 rebounds. But later, before completely breaking into a star with Barça, he made the leap to the NBA, where he continued to play as a Barcelona player.
That changed later, when he had to return and did not do so to a club that had his rights in Europe, with a price of 400,000 euros for his freedom. At the Palau they were looking for a forward but with a different profile, so they renounced the rights of a player who went to Unics, and played at his best competitive level (14.2 points and 6 rebounds). His next destination was Real Madrid, where he arrived at an ideal moment in his career to contribute as a very solid player on the court, both in defense and attack, with traces of the star that he always aimed to be and, furthermore, already with rested veteran character in the locker room. In white he has won all the titles in the last two years, under the orders of Chus Mateo.
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