Barcelona's Summer Plans for Roster Renewal
Once again, Barcelona has to activate Plan B and even Plan C to close a squad that will be very renewed, especially in the interior game, after the first season without titles in the Pascual era (the coach from Gavá has directed complete seasons). Lampe, Nachbar, and Pleiss leave the interior rotation and Pleiss will go to the Utah Jazz. Doellman and Tomic remain, accompanied by one of the great pearls of European basketball, Sasha Vezenkov, as well as two players who will bring the physical presence that the team missed so much last season: Shane Lawal and Moussa Diagne. The first is expected to be very important, the second is a future bet who will be the fifth interior player and will fill one of the spots reserved for locals.
Barcelona's Other Challenges
In addition to the departure of Hezonja, Marcelinho Huertas and DeShaun Thomas also finished their contracts. The club did not exercise their right of priority, but their continuity is not ruled out. Huertas has more than one offer away from Palau, but he could return if Barcelona and he do not finalize other options. Thomas depends on finding a spot in the NBA and whether the point guard that Barcelona signs is a non-European player. If so, the forward will not continue, and Barcelona will have to sign a European player for the small forward position. These positions are where the problems arise for what we could call Plan A: Sonny Weems joined the Suns, Khimki is not negotiating for Tyrese Rice, and Gigi Datome leaves the NBA but will play for Fenerbahçe. With this in mind, Barcelona is looking at other potential targets: point guard Malcolm Delaney and... Alexey Shved. The first is a fast and scoring point guard who shone at Bayern and played last season at Lokomotiv Kuban.
Shved, on the other hand, is considering a possible return to Europe after finishing the season with the Knicks and his agent has assured that he has rejected three offers from the NBA and that there is interest from teams in "Russia and Spain".