LA Lakers center from Croatia, Ivica Zubac, says there are differences between the NBA and European basketball. An NBA season features 82 Regular Season games, while in Europe many top leagues feature a 30-40 game regular season. In the NBA, teams play a couple of games per week during a regular season, while on the continent of Europe teams play mostly one game per week. Zubac, who was drafted at number 32 by the Lakers at last year's NBA draft, spent some time playing basketball professionaly in Europe before coming to the United States.
Zubac explains how it all goes
''It's a lot different, like there you got one game per week, so you're getting ready like five days and then you play a game, and then you have a lot of time to think about (your) last game,'' Ivica Zubac told reporters, in an interview which can be found on the Lakers Nation YouTube channel. ''But, here (in the NBA) you just gotta move on, every game -- if we played bad we just gotta watch film and move on to the next one.''
The rookie badly wants to improve
Ivica Zubac hasn't had a bad rookie season so far for the Los Angeles Lakers, and has been playing some good basketball recently. He has played in 33 games for L.A. this campaign, and has been a starter on six occasions.
Zubac has averaged 7.2 points along with 4.2 rebounds in 15.3 minutes per game on the season. In the last five games, the 20-year-old has been averaging 13.0 points and 6.6 rebounds in 21.6 minutes per contest.
''I got to work hard this summer, because this summer is very important for me,'' Zubac added. ''Now everybody knows me so I gotta be better than this season.
I'm trying to get some rest after the season, couple of weeks, and then come back here and work out everyday, try to get better, work out on my conditioning, my body strength and that's gonna be the biggest key, I think.''
Zubac doesn't seem to be backing down from getting his hands dirty and it's a positive thing to see. He would certainly like to improve his skills and contribute regularly to his team. It remains to be seen if Zubac will come out of the upcoming offseason a better player.
