Donatas Motiejunas has spoken. The Lithuanian player, a member of AS Monaco who plays in the French League, has recalled his time in the NBA in some statements made on social networks and collected by the Basket News website. In his words, Motiejunas assures that the treatment that the best League in the world gives to young people is not good, he has complained about certain medical diagnoses and has shown that he is not very happy with the North American competition, in which he played a total of six seasons with disparate episodes, some full of injuries and others with an acceptable level of play.
“I failed my physicals and doctors in Detroit told me I would never play basketball again… Six years later, I’m still here and I have many years to go.. They are destroying the names and futures of young players in the NBA by doing this“, assured Motiejunas on social networks. The player’s anger was clear. Let us remember that the Lithuanian played his last game in the NBA on April 25, 2019, in the playoffs and with the Spurs shirt, a team for which he only played 8 games between regular season and final phase.
Before that, the player had played two years in the Chinese League, to which he returned after passing through the Spurs to pocket good money and continue making statistics (he averaged 21.6 points and 13.7 rebounds with the Tigers over the course last). This course, he has signed for Monaco, but that has not prevented him from remembering his time in the NBA. A memory that, at first sight, is not particularly pleasant and that has a marked criticism of the treatment of the teams and the competition towards the youngest players. Motiejunas, let’s remember, was selected in the 2011 draft, when he was only 21 years old. And he waited a season to make the jump to the Rockets, already with 22.
The episode to which the Lithuanian refers with his words occurred in Detroit. Before, he enjoyed some good basketball on the Rockets, in which he coincided with players of the stature of James Harden, Dwight Howard or, to a lesser extent, Jeremy Lin. Motiejunas played in the 2015 Western Conference finals, his best season statistically (12 points and 5.9 rebounds on average). During his fourth year with the Rockets, exactly on February 18, 2016, Motiejunas and Marcus Thornton were traded to the Pistons in a move in which the Sixers were also involved.
Of course, four days after his signing, the Pistons waived Motiejunas’ services, claiming that the back problems he suffered from and had been dragging for years were not going to let him play. At the end, the Lithuanian went through the Pelicans and the aforementioned Spurs. And today he continues to play basketball, contrary to what the Pistons doctors told him. An error that Motiejunas does not forget. And of which he wanted to remember a long time later in a message that has been accompanied by a certain rancor. It is not for less. Or so it seems, Wow.
