Just three years ago and with a conversation over beers, Pablo Laso began to give shape to a project that was born in the heat of the success of its campuses: the Laso Academy. A new way to help young people in their formative stages and accompany them on their path to the basketball elite.
The academy is there for that, for these kids to progress and for them to fulfill their dream and for us to help them in whatever way we can.
Today that project is a reality that has managed to carve out a place among the best teams in the country. In fact, last season it was already able to sneak between Real Madrid and Barcelona in two different categories, being the best basketball-only team of last season. Achievements that prove the Vitorian coach right and a project in which names trained at the Academy are already beginning to sound strongly.
Matija Lukic, the first member of the Laso Academy to debut in the Endesa League
The first of them was Matija Lukicwho was the first player to come out of the academy directed by the Anadolu Efes coach to debut in the Endesa League in the ranks of Casademont Zaragoza, and was also a reference for the Maño team in the newly created U22 League. A competition in which names like Joaquin Taboada, Liam Creat o Axel Laso in Burgos or Soumaila Keita y Anthony Rodríguez in the Zaragoza team.
Matija Lukic shoots a basket during training.
Mamadou Playo Shurmes al DrBa
They have been the first products to come out of the Laso factory, but they will not be the last. In fact, there are already three names that the different scouts have noted in their agendas. And two of them even appear in draft forecasts. This is the case of Mamadou Bagayoko and Platon Shurmel, who appear among the best in the class of 2011 for the prestigious website Draftpoint.
A class led by Barcelona player Mohammed Dabone and in which names from the Laso Academy already appear. The first is that of Bagayoko, a Malian player who was third last season in the Spanish Cadet Championship with the Madrid team and who played in the Mini Cup with Gran Canaria. For his part, Shurmel, a Ukrainian center who is over 2.10 and who was also third in the Spanish Championship last year.
“The academy is there for that, for these kids to progress and for them to fulfill their dream and for us to help them in whatever way we can. I think that was what we had in mind when we thought about the academy and the success and future of these kids is what moves us to continue improving every day,” says Pablo Laso from Turkey when evaluating the work that is being done and the achievements that, little by little, his Academy is having.
Christian Echezuria, the latest teenager to attract attention at the Laso Academy
The third name that attracts attention in an Academy is that of the Venezuelan Christian Echezuria. Electric point guard who already played in the Mini Cup with Joventut and who has been called up by his country’s U16 team, the South American player is one of the Academy’s great projects and one of the best in a promotion, that of 2011, which is being especially fruitful for an Academy that in just three years has gone from nothing to appearing linked to the draft.
