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Real Madrid defends the domestic throne in the return of Marc Gasol and against a hurt Barça

MADRID, 27 Sep.

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Real Madrid defends the domestic throne in the return of Marc Gasol and against a hurt Barça

MADRID, 27 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The 2022/23 Endesa League officially kicks off this Wednesday in Girona, where Real Madrid will begin the defense of its title against one of the recently promoted players and reinforced by the presence of Marc Gasol, in a season that is expected to have another one-on-one with a Barça 'wounded' and that wants to recover the throne.

The Madrid team will defend a throne that they snatched from their eternal rival Barça after a great end to the season in which they overcame all problems, including the heart attack suffered by Pablo Laso. That scare caused Real Madrid to decide to do without the Vitorian for their bench and give the command to Chus Mateo, the one in charge of doing in the league final.

For now, the new coach has already been able to lead the team to its first title of the campaign, the Endesa Super Cup, the fifth in a row, where he extended his good run against Barça and with a renewed team.

Thus, the squad is no longer Thomas Heurtel, Trey Thompkins, Jeff Taylor or the young Juan Núñez, and good pieces like the MVP of the last Endesa League, the Bosnian Dzanan Musa. All this together with the return of Sergio el 'Chacho' Rodríguez, and the arrivals of former Barcelona player Mario Hezonja and Frenchman Petr Cornelie, the latter direct from the NBA.

His first exam will be on a basketball-scented court like Fontajau, where a Bàsquet Girona awaits him, once again with the veteran Marc Gasol, the key to his rise from the LEB Oro and who returns home 14 years later, and the wisdom in the benches of Aíto García Reneses. With these weapons, the Girona team will want to aspire to ambitious heights beyond permanence.

For its part, Barça has the pending task of recovering the regularity that it lost in the last stretch of last season. A weak point that led him to destroy his predominance in the continental and national Regular Phase.

As a consequence, they ended up with two painful eliminations against their great rival, both in the semifinals of the Euroleague and in the final of the Endesa League. Debacles that extended their bad run against the team from the capital this weekend with the defeat in extra time of the first trophy at stake of the season.

Now, Sarunas Jasikevicius, in charge of his third year in Barcelona, ​​is aware of the important renewal of the project, without Nick Calathes, Brandon Davies or Dante Exum, with his star, Nikola Mirotic, temporarily absent due to his injury to the Achilles tendon and level reinforcements such as center Jan Vesely and point guard Tomas Satoransky.

Beyond the eternal fight between the main favorites to win the competition, the Endesa League will live a season full of novelties, as is the case of new regulations that come to invigorate the game and with several teams willing to fight to give 'war ' to the two favorites.

In the fight to gain a foothold in the leading positions of the classification, two regulars appear, such as Cazoo Baskonia and Valencia Basket, as Euroleague teams, which will have to fight an arduous battle with the thriving Joventut and Lenovo Tenerife, with the Copa del King and the 'playoffs' as main objectives.

Precisely the Cazoo Baskonia has taken over the services of Joan Peñarroya, the new coach for the next two seasons who arrives from Valencia Basket, a team with which he has reached the Eurocup semifinals this season. A direct rival who has made up for the loss with Alex Mumbrú.

The Catalan coach will base his options on the quality of Bojan Dubljevic, Jared Harper, Jaime Pradilla or Xabier López-Arostegui -these last two European champions-, while Baskonia will do so with Rokas Giedraitis, Matt Costello or Steven Enoch, and reinforcements like Marcus Howard and Darius Thompson.

Also, Joventut de Badalona continues to make giant strides in its project, which saw its aspirations halted in the semifinals against Barça and which maintains a block led by Ante Tomic, Joel Parra and the signings of Kyle Guy and William Howard, while Lenovo Tenerife clings to its partner Marcelinho-Giorgi Shermadini.

Gran Canaria, UCAM Murcia and Baxi Manresa want to defend their good performance from last year, a fight that wants to join a classic like Unicaja that has moved away from the best, and a Surne Bilbao Basket and a Río Breogán that hope not note the progress of the Mumbrú and Dzanan Musa slates, respectively.

Finally, the battle for relegation to the LEB Oro is also expected to be tough with teams that fought the unspeakable last year such as Carplus Fuenlabrada, Casademont Zaragoza, Coosur Real Betis and Monbus Obradoiro, and who are joined by the other recently promoted team, Coviran Granada.