“The first thing I want is to win here,” says Kevin Punter (New York, 31 years old), Barcelona’s star signing this summer. “The Euroleague, the Endesa League and as many titles as possible,” he specifies. An ambition that includes beating Real Madrid in the semi-finals of the Super Cup, a trophy that has eluded the Barça club since 2015. It will not be just any game for this resident of the Bronx, the neighbourhood where he learned to play in the streets, when he did not even suspect the twists and turns that life takes.
Punter will face the Whites again, unable to avoid memories of the pitched battle in the second game of the 2023 Euroleague quarter-finals, where a clash between him and Sergio Llull sparked a series of pushes and attacks. “I certainly thought a lot about that series against Real Madrid and everything that happened,” he said days after the Whites won their eleventh Euroleague. “It really hurt me, and for me it was something very personal, everyone knows why. I thought about it for days, I couldn’t get it out of my head,” he added.
With a decisive triple in the first game with four-tenths of a second to go and 28 points in the fifth and final game of that series, despite the defeat, Punter amply demonstrated the decisive ability that has taken him to Barcelona. “This is what I do,” he boasted at the time. At Barça they are delighted to have added to their powerful team one of the most decisive players on the continent, the same one they already pursued in the past and missed out on due to a bigger financial offer from Belgrade.
“In today’s basketball, it is very necessary to have players with this profile, who are capable of generating many points for themselves and for others,” says Joan Peñarroya, the new Barça coach. Roger Grimau, his predecessor in the position, acknowledged that the American was already in the club’s plans last year. “It was a setback. We will see him this year as a reference player, a guy with scoring ability and important leadership,” he told the newspaper. Sport. Punter, who like every American child dreamed of playing in the NBA and became interested in the game through his father, had to travel across half of Europe to end up at the Palau.
“It’s been a long journey. Coming from where I come from, I never thought I could be here. My life has had many ups and downs, but all the work has been worth it,” says the protagonist. After not being chosen in the draft In 2016, the shooting guard tried his luck in the Summer League with the Minnesota Timberwolves, but had to change his focus after being condemned to the bench. He started in a modest team in the Greek first division and went on to play in Belgium, Poland, Italy and Serbia, consolidating himself as a continental star with Zeljko Obradovic’s Partizan. His numbers show his impact on the court: 12.6 points, two rebounds and two assists in 25 minutes on average in 124 Euroleague appearances, with 49.7% success in field goals and 39.3% in three-pointers.
Another characteristic of Punter is his perseverance. Before reaching university, he failed the SAT, the American entrance exam, seven times. Desperate, he found in his family the necessary support to continue rowing against the current: “When I was 18, I was really close to quitting, but they asked me not to make an emotional and hasty decision. They were always there in both the good and bad times.”
This new Barça boasts more punch and depth, with the challenge of fitting five new pieces under the scheme of a coach who has always displayed dynamic and entertaining basketball in his previous stops. In addition to Punter, the blaugranas incorporate Justin Anderson, Youssoupha Fall, Chimezie Metu and Juan Núñez, a former player from the white youth team who decided to emigrate to Germany to gain prominence and minutes on the court. The former NBA player Jabari Parker, the other star of the project and a sensation last season, has defined the objectives of the season more clearly than anyone else. “We have everything, the players and the team. staff coach. This year there are no excuses,” he said before the official start of the 2024-25 season.
