Rodions Kurucs

Rodions Kurucs was born in 1998 in the northeastern Latvian city of Cesis, which is famous for the Cesis Castle. His basketball career started in Latvia with VEF Riga's youth academy, VEF Riga Skola. In 2014, Kurucs signed a multi-year deal with VEF Riga and played in Latvia's second men's division (LBL2). That led to his 2014-2015 debut playing for VEF's first team in the LBL as well as the EuroCup. Then in the summer of 2015, the lanky Latvian signed with the popular Spanish franchise FC Barcelona. He would eventually make his EuroLeague debut on Mar. 24th, 2017 in a home win over Crvena zvezda Belgrade. After another season with Barcelona, Kurucs would declare for the 2018 NBA Draft. He has played on a few different Latvian national teams, including the entry in the 2019 FIBA World Cup qualifying games. Rodions Kurucs spent his mid-teen years with VEF Riga as part of Latvia's second men's division. As a 15-year-old, he played in 10 games and averaged 3.2 points. The following season, he showed plenty of potential by scoring 19.6 points and 6.1 rebounds in 19 games for Riga. Kurucs showed his willingness to take long range shots and converted 31.3 percent of his 3-pointers for 2.2 treys per game. In 2015, he played in the Adidas Next Generation Tournament. Later in 2015, The 6-9 forward then moved to FC Barcelona and spent his first season with the reserve team, Barcelona B. In the 2016-17 season, he averaged 9.5 points per contest over 24 games. In 2017-18, as a 19-year-old, he split time between FC Barcelona's top team and minor league team, though his playing time Barcelona's top team was modest. He appeared in 26 games (five starts) for FC Barcelona and FC Barcelona II in LEB Gold, ACB and Euroleague play, averaging 7.1 points, 1.8 rebounds and 1.0 assists in 15 minutes per game. His athletic build and 6-foot-10 size drew interest from NBA scouts and Kurucs declared himself available for the 2018 NBA Draft.