Sacramento Kings’ latest breakthrough signing can be an NBA star

Sasha’s commitment issues to the United States

While Vezenkov has finally signed to the Kings, ending a six-year saga of “Will he come, will he not come?”, it is clear that Sasha has not been too particularly interested in America in the past.

In 2013, Vezenkov committed to playing college basketball at Xavier University, the same school rookie teammate Colby Jones played for. However, Sasha ultimately ended up deciding not to make the move to the United States and elected to remain in Greece, where he truly made a big name for himself.

In 2016, Vezenkov declared for the NBA draft after his first season with Barcelona. However, he withdrew his name just 10 days before the NBA draft on the June 13th deadline for international players.

In 2017, after he was finally drafted late in the second round by the Brooklyn Nets, Vezenkov never made the switch to the NBA. After multiple teams had failed to sign him for years, Vezenkov’s draft rights were traded to the Sacramento Kings in 2022 during the NBA draft. However, there was no agreement between the teams and Sasha ended up playing another year in Europe, aiming for more titles with Olympiacos.

Clearly, Sasha had hesitations to come to the United States considering it took 10 years, but the Sacramento Kings were able to achieve what other teams couldn’t when they signed Vezenkov last Saturday.