We’ve reached the portion of NBA Draft season where the collective NBA Draft Twitter resident is diving into Euroleague, NBL and La Liga film. While the level of international prospect has taken a bit of a dip in recent years, as the likes of Luka Doncic and Victor Wembanyama are quite hard to follow, this is still an interesting class of imports. Outside of Karim Lopez, I believe the best of the bunch to be Valencia Basket’s Sergio De Larrea.
The basics
Sergio de Larrea (born December 4, 2005) was born into
a basketball family. Raised by Jorge de Larrea and Nuria Asenjo, both of whom played basketball in college in Spain, de Larrea followed their path. After briefly attending Colegio San Agustin, de Larrea joined Valencia Basket in 2020.
After training and playing for the Valencia Junior and Reserve teams, de Larrea made his debut with the senior team in January of 2023. He was just 17 at the time of his debut. He has also been a long-time member of the Spanish National Team, having developed with the junior team in the FIBA U17’s in 2022, the U19 World Cup in 2023 and finally, the senior national team prior to the 2024 Olympics.
After considering the NBA Draft last offseason, de Larrea seems fully committed to sticking in the class this go around.
The good
Sergio de Larrea has worked his way into being an excellent shooter. Across 54 games in both the EuroLeague and the Spanish Liga ACB this season, de Larrea is shooting 39% from 3 on a 47% three-point attempt rate. The shot itself looks smooth, and he’s been comfortable getting to it both off the catch and the bounce. Across his four years in Europe playing professionally, de Larrea is shooting 41% from deep.
de Larrea has a really nice feel for the game, as both his pacing and vision are visual reminders of how long this guy has been playing high level basketball. On the offensive end especially, everything is polished from a technique and knowing what he wants to get to perspective.
The concern
I hate to trot out what would seem to be a standard European athlete trope, but with de Larrea there’s no escaping it: He’s not the greatest athlete we’ve ever seen. Strength, quickness, pure footspeed and jumping are all needing improvement. He’s going to have to do some serious work to his body to ensure that he can guard his position, beat defenders with his first step, and play rotation minutes in the NBA. Because of that, his rookie year will very likely be a redshirt, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the second year takes on the feeling of a standard rookie season.
Fit with the Mavericks
The new Mavericks front office might be new here, but these are experienced operators who have shown in the past their willingness to take a gamble on a prospect. Think back to last year, when Schmitz’s Trail Blazers took Yang Hansen much earlier than expected. Masai Ujiri always had a feel for international prospects in Toronto. This makes Dallas taking a stab at de Larrea a very interesting proposition. After watching the games and knowing the work that’s ahead of him, I’d be comfortable taking a shot on de Larrea at pick 30.
NBA comparison
He’s got shades of a couple interesting guards. Yahoo!’s Kevin O’Connor compared him to Malcolm Brogdon, which I think is a very fair comp. They both are big guards with a lack of burst, yet were able to carve a role out with shooting, playmaking and smarts. I think another interesting comp is a taller Ricky Rubio, just with less flair and passing chops but a better shot. Rubio was such a good passer, controlled games with his pace and lived in the pick and roll. de Larrea can do some of that too, but with a 40% three-point shot to counter some actions in the two-man game. Sure, it’s a risk, but if de Larrea hits he can be a big-time offensive player in this league.
