Like any rookie, coming to the NBA and adjusting to a new team in a new city, is sometimes jarring.
No. 15 overall pick Juancho Hernangomez, who’s joining the Nuggets directly from Spain where he played professionally since 2012, is no different – and like most prospects who sign with the team or visit Denver for a pre-draft workout, the altitude is the first thing they notice.
“The first day was crazy with the altitude,” Hernangomez told BSN Denver after the third day of Summer League minicamp. ” You can play so well, but it’s so tough.”
The 20-year-old reiterated that he knows the altitude will help him out in the long run, but it takes a while to get adjusted to the thin air.
Hernangomez is also adjusting to life outside of basketball in Denver.
Monday night, he went to watch the Colorado Rapids, the Major League Soccer team located in Denver with some of his fellow Summer League teammates.
Hey @ColoradoRapids, let’s go!#Rapids96 #Nuggets pic.twitter.com/N9WQPxdTDa
— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) July 5, 2016
“This team is like familia, everyone is so nice, everyone has helped me out so much, so I’m really grateful to be here,” Hernangomez said. “It’s so nice to grow up together with these young guys and it’s exciting because we can be a good team in the future.”
With so many younger players on the Summer League roster that could seemingly be with the Nuggets this season and beyond, it’s great to see that this group is already so close. The fact that Denver has international players ranging up and down its roster can’t hurt either.
The influx of international talent throughout the league, especially in this past draft is fascinating. The league is growing abroad and more and more European players are coming to the NBA with the talent to survive and thrive amongst the best players in the world.
The Nuggets have an especially unique situation with at least five players who could be on their opening night roster that hail from international backgrounds. The international flavor is something that Summer League head coach Micah Nori is receptive to and enjoys coaching.
“It’s gotten to the point where we’ve had Europeans in the league, obviously for a while and we do have a lot here, but just having been around them, you realize it but you don’t really think about it,” Nori said. “There are so many here now and you do take for granted that they’re easy to coach because they’ve been taught well in their upbringings and they understand everything well, and they understand the game of basketball. It’s actually nice to have.”
Nori expanded on what he thinks makes European players different.
“The one thing that you find out with European players, it probably gets overstated, but having done camps overseas and stuff like that, they really do a great job of teaching the game and coaching the game,” Nori said. “It’s not so much of just a 1-on-1, let’s go get your shot. Now they do their skill development, but they’re so much more focused on the finer things of passing, spacing, moving, everybody can shoot, everybody can ball handle.”
Hernangomez, Axel Toupane, Petr Cornelie, Ondrej Balvin, and Mateusz Pontika, who all come from various European backgrounds, will play with the Nuggets at Summer League.
