Nikola Topic, of resilient form, is administered with caution by Thunder: "He faced a difficult path"
Oklahoma City Thunder will take a cautious approach with Serbian point guard Nikola Topic, 21, starting training camp as a restricted free agent. The player faced cruciate ligament rupture, advanced testicular cancer diagnosis and back surgery. GM Sam Presti praised his resilience and stressed that long-term health is a priority.
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The story so far
Few NBA players have accumulated so many obstacles in such a short amount of time as Nikola Topic. The 21-year-old Serbian forward, who trained at the base level for Crvena Zvezda and won the FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship in 2023, arrived to Oklahoma City Thunder surrounded by expectation and since then has lived through a sequence of accumulating setbacks: one full year due to an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture, a diagnosis of superado testicular cancer and, most recently, surgery on his back during the offseason.
The Thunder decided that Topic would start training camp as a limited participant.
A collective of Presti
At Thursday's pre-season press conference, executive vice president and general manager Sam Presti detailed the player roster and praised his stance in the face of such adversity.
"He had a hard road. There's no other way to look at it. It was incredible how he dealt with these things at his age", said Presti about the 6-foot-5 forward, who made his first 19 starts in the NBA last season for Oklahoma City.
O recado da diretoria é claro: a reintegração de Topic será conduzida com paciência extrema, with restrictions at the beginning of the camp while the club manages to recuperate after a long break.
O rest of the European list
Topic não foi o único nome do Velho Continente em destaque na fala de Presti. O manager expects a leap of quality from the Belgian shipowner Ajay Mitchell, who devoted himself to physical preparation to gain força e resistência. Já o pivô espanhol Aday Mara, newly-drafted, arrives to give immediate flexibilidade ao garrafão alongside the German Isaiah Hartenstein. Com essas peças, o técnico Mark Daigneault wins an option to climb Chet Holmgren alternating between wing-pivo and pivo.
The next steps
O calendário já tem datas definidas: a media day da pré-temporada acontece na segunda-feira, followed by five jogos de exibição nas próximas semanas. The debut in the 20262727 regular season is scheduled for October 20, against Victor Wembanyama's San Antonio Spurs, not Frost Bank Center.
Where are we ?
The Thunder enters the training camp with a defined roster, but with controlled subject matter a priority of the technical committee and a long-term health of the young owner, not an immediate schedule. A response on how much he can make will come throughout pre-season and the first weeks of season.
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Source: Eurohoops
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