Another European basketball champion for Barça. The Barça club have signed guard Darío Brizuela from Unicaja after paying the Malaga-based company his €1.2m severance clause. The Barcelona team thus joins their ranks with a new gold medalist with the Spanish side at the last European Championship, after taking in Willy Hernangómez, for whom Madrid did not exercise the right of first refusal, and paying Joventut a million for striker Joel Parra.
Brizuela, 28 years old and 1.88m tall, is strengthening Barca’s outside game after the departure of Kyle Kuric and ahead of the possible departure of Corey Higgins, another player with a high salary (like Mirotic) that Barcelona fans are keen on can try to save. The group that Roger Grimau will coach next season adds a good shooter, a mobile pawn who, together with Sergio Scariolo’s team, played the role of agitator in the last Eurobasket at moments when the Spanish attack was stronger perfectly fulfilled. Brizuela averaged 7.9 points, 1.6 assists and a 33% success rate in three-pointers (11 out of 33) in the European Championship, records similar to those of his last year in the ACB with Unicaja: 9.2 points, 2, 2 assists and 30% in the foreign throw (curiously, his lowest percentage in that facet in national competition since the 2016-17 academic year). In both scenarios with an average of 15 minutes on the route.
[𝐔́𝐋𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐀 𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐀]
Dario Brizuela, new Blaugrana formation 💙❤
— Barça Basket (@FCBbasket) July 13, 2023
The San Sebastián-born basketball player, who played with Estudiantes until signing with Unicaja in 2019, is enjoying the best months of his career. He won gold with Spain, his first absolute title (he won silver in the European U20 Championship in 2014), won the Copa del Rey with Malaga, was also his debut in club history and was a finalist in the Champions League and semi-finalist in the Endesa League led by coach Ibon Navarro. In the cup, he defeated Barcelona in the quarter-finals by 27 points, a duel he almost didn’t play because he almost lost the tournament due to the illness of his then one-month-old son Bruno, who was hospitalized. The Basque had already scored 33 points against Barça in the same round of the 2021 cup, but it wasn’t enough to make it into the semifinals.
At Unicaja, Brizuela’s departure caught him by surprise as in April he extended his contract until 2026, which has been confirmed as one of the Cupbearer champion’s key points. However, he now lands in a Barcelona who, along with Willy and Joel Parra, are doubling down on their commitment to national talent. Brizuela has been called up to play the next World Cup with Spain (from August 25th to September 10th) on a call from Scariolo, which keeps 10 Eurobasket champions as a common thread (there will be four discards among the 16). Like Parra and like Alberto Díaz and Jaime Fernández, with whom he met at Unicaja, Brizuela is part of that generational change that has surpassed all forecasts with the gold in Berlin and ahead of him is the World Cup this summer and the games in Paris Olympia 2024. Before that, he will make his Euroleague debut, another step forward in his career.
Barça reports on the profile it tried to link with the signing of Kevin Punter, an American guard who eventually decided to renew his contract with Partizán under Zeljko Obradovic. Brizuela also offers insolence in attack and a good dose of character. In the Palau, the focus will be more on him.
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