While Paolo Banchero, Duke’s Italian winger, wins the freshman of the year award in the Atlantic Coast Conference and comes third in the ranking of the best player of the year (behind Alondes Williams and Armando Bacot), San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich equals the record for all-time wins in the NBA.
The 19-year-old Italian was the second best scorer in the whole NCAA among the freshmen with 17.1 points per game, at the moment he is a candidate for the fifth overall pick in the next NBA draft.
The 117-110 victory of the San Antonio Spurs over the Los Angeles Lakers instead led Gregg Popovich to cross the line of 1,335 NBA wins as a coach, equaling Don Nelson’s record. Tonight the Spurs will face the Toronto Raptors and Popovich, 73, in his 26th season as head coach of the San Antonio Spurs, the only NBA team he has coached and with which he has won 5 titles, could become the overall number one.
