A Mexico City Basketball Team With N.B.A. Dreams Makes a Home in Texas
In May, the Capitanes poached Nick Lagios from the Lakers corporation to make him their typical manager, and by September, a compromise of sorts experienced been achieved: The Capitanes would strike the highway for 14 online games as part of the G League’s Showcase Cup, then engage in a pair of exhibitions in January towards the G League Ignite, the team for major N.B.A. prospective customers.
Lagios and Díaz sought a combine of players as they assembled their roster: players with Latin American roots, players who relished defending, players with expertise who could mentor youthful teammates. The group wooed gamers with the risk of staying seen by N.B.A. scouts alongside with the considerably much less alluring offer of a prorated G League wage, which is generally $37,000 for a complete 50-activity season. As well as, the gamers could be a aspect of one thing new.
“It’s a group that cares about successful,” said Justin Reyes, a previous Division II all-American at St. Thomas Aquinas University in Sparkill, N.Y. “So we all realized we would have to have to make sacrifices to make it operate in such a quick total of time.”
Serratos recalled the commence of training camp past month and a second of collective joy: The Capitanes, immediately after so a lot of delays and so considerably uncertainty, had last but not least appear jointly. But his serenity was jarred loose, he stated, when Tyler Davis, a 6-foot-10 energy ahead, went up for a dunk in the very first minutes of the team’s to start with observe and shattered the backboard. Díaz rushed around to test on him.
“Tyler, you are a monster!” Díaz told him.
When Serratos started calculating how much it would expense to change the backboard, there was another, additional instant problem: His selection of nomads was out of the blue down a hoop. No far more dunking.
‘Win Each individual Game’
On the early morning of their sport from the Austin Spurs, the Capitanes were back again on the bus — this time, bound for a light-weight shootaround at the arena and one more chance to variety chemistry. The workforce had been bolstered by a pair of late additions, like Moises Andriassi, a 21-calendar year-aged position guard and 1 of Mexico’s best young gamers.
