“On Tuesday we got a great victory away from home against a difficult opponent. It is a victory that means a lot to us and encourages us to compete well on the court of Maccabi. The Israeli team has a good defense and expects another match “We have to be prepared because their pavilion always has a great atmosphere,” said Calathes, who started the Euroleague with an average of 7.8 points and 5.3 assists.
The defeat of the AX Armani Exchange in Milan in Munich left Barça as the only unbeaten team in the Euroleague. The Barça team did not start the maximum competition winning the first six games since the 2014-15 season. The next challenge will come this Thursday, when the players trained by Sarunas Jasikevicius will visit the track of a Maccabi (20.05 h, DAZN) that accumulates three consecutive victories. Calathes, who in the locker room is known by the nickname of Carats (carats), is the grandson of a World War II hero who knew how to reinvent himself as an engineer. His influence on Nick, whom he tried to go and see how he trained every day, was very great: “My grandfather was an important part in understanding my success and my career, because he pushed me a lot and he was also my big fan ”.
The surname Calathes, which in Greek translates as basket, was a premonition, because Nick soon became attracted to basketball. When he was eight, with the complicity of his siblings and a neighbor, he asked his father to build him a basketball court in the backyard of his home. He told them yes, but demanded that they cooperate. The children put up for sale a collection of basketball cards that included Pete Maravich’s letter in his year of rookie. They raised $ 400, enough to start work. Since then his life cannot be told without basketball.
