Meet the Timberwolves’s hidden European gem

Mandatory Credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports

Showing promise in the Italian league?

Still, without a place in the stacked Real Madrid roster, Matteo was loaned once again to Italy, but this time, to Trento, a team that finished the previous season near the bottom of the table and had no real expectations to do much that year too, with the three best scorers leaving the team, it was really Matteo’s time to shine.

Not shying away from the spotlight, the young Italian guard played a fantastic season. He averaged around 12 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 3.0 assists, and he did so in fewer minutes than his previous performance.

He made sure to show flashes of improvement in areas that really needed some tweaking. In his first season in Italy. For example, he had the eighth most total turnovers in the league in his first season of competition. The reason was simply plenty of bad playmaking decisions and hesitations with the ball. That resulted in turning the basketball over almost 3 times per game.

But this time around, he ended up reducing that number to 1.8 TO. While he still has a long way to go on this remark, his drastic improvement shows that his future sure does look promising.

Playing in the second-best European competition?

Playing for Trento also meant playing in the EuroCup, the second-tier of the renowned Euroleague, with the winners having the possibility of playing in the main competition, the stakes were very high.

From winning only one game last season to four wins this year, Matteo’s impact didn’t change no matter the stage he was playing, averaging very similar numbers to what he did in the national league.

He put on an astronomical performance against this year’s champions, Gran Canaria, scoring 23 points, four rebounds, and four assists, while also shooting 67 percent from the three-point line, something that is not frequent in his game.