Frenchman Guerschon Yabusele returns to the NBA, bringing to an end a three-season stint at Real Madrid, where he became an important player without ever becoming a star of the team, which he could have aspired to.
Although it has yet to be official, this time it has been the Philadelphia 76ers, who have already recruited the Canarian point guard Sergio Rodríguez for American basketball again, who have decided to go for the man who was number 16 in the 2016 draft, just behind Juancho Hernangómez and ahead of names like Pascal Siakam or Dejounte Murray.
On that occasion, he was chosen by the Boston Celtics, where he spent two seasons and where he earned the nickname of ‘dancing bear’. The comparison with the animal was made by his physical exuberance, with Jaylen Brown, a teammate of his generation and team, named MVP of the Finals last year, saying of him that he was “a force of nature who can shoot and has good feet.” This last characteristic, honed thanks to his boxing experience when he was young, was what earned him the adjective ‘beast’.
However, his role on the big stage at that time was almost a cameo. He first spent a year in China with the Shanghai Sharks and upon his return to the United States he alternated with the G-League and ended up playing 74 games in which he averaged 6.6 minutes, 2.3 points and 1.4 rebounds.
His numbers were not enough to avoid being released, but they earned him a new contract in China with the Nanjin Monkey Kings and later one with a Euroleague club like ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne. It was his return to France, where he had excelled before crossing the Atlantic with Chorale Roanne and Rouen Métropole. Yabusele then showed that he had a place in the European elite, averaging a total of 11 points, 4.2 rebounds and 1.2 assists in 30 games in the top continental competition in 2020-2021. The next step was his landing at Real Madrid to join a squad that included his compatriots Fabien Causeur, Thomas Heurtel and Vincent Poirier; none of whom remain.
There he has had moments of great inspiration that were capable of winning games and granting him individual recognitions such as MVPs on isolated days and in January 2022 in the Euroleague, or the one achieved in May 2023 in the Endesa League.
The latter served to soften to a certain extent his most bitter passage in white, a blemish in his career for which many will remember him in Goya over the years. It happened on April 28 of that same year, in the second match of the playoffs of the top European competition that pitted his team against Partizan Belgrade.
That day, in the midst of a pitched battle on the WiZink Center court, Yabusele knocked down Dante Exum with a shameful ‘judo hold’ that ended up causing him a five-match ban. The consequences were especially painful, as it prevented him from playing the rest of that historic series in which Real Madrid came back from a 0-2 deficit and from being present in the Final Four, from which his team emerged champion.
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