By Johnny Askounis/ info@eurohoops.net
Goga Bitadze spent the bottom end of the offseason with the senior national team of Georgia, helping his country rank eighth in the EuroBasket 2025 tournament.
“Great thing for the country of Georgia. Nobody has ever done that in our history,” he mentioned during the preseason media day of the Orlando Magic on Monday.
However, Magic teammates Franz Wagner and Tristan da Silva returned from FIBA action as gold-medalists with Germany.
“Making the top eight teams maybe doesn’t sound great after Franz and Tristan won it all, but for the little country of Georgia, it’s a huge thing,” explained the 26-year-old Georgian big.
Following up on international spells in the FIBA World Cup 2023 and EuroBasket 2022, Bitadze averaged 15.8 points per contest in the most recent edition of EuroBasket.
“The guys who were there with the national team for so many years, they’ve done so many things, and sacrificed so much for the national team. They deserved it,” he praised other players on the team coached by Aleksandar Dzikic.
“The population of Georgia is 3.5 million. For us, being able to beat Spain, being able to beat France, it wasn’t like a fluke that we just beat some easier teams and we made it out of the group. We took it the hard way,” he also recapped the path from pool play at Limassol to the knockout stage in Riga.
“It was also great for me personally. You can get that little extra confidence that you can play with the best,” added Bitadze.
In contrast to the native of Sagarejo, a town 58 kilometers outside of Tbilisi, and his Magic teammates on the German national team, Moritz Wagner sat out EuroBasket due to injury. Continuing knee surgery rehab, he remains sidelined to start the 2025 NBA Preseason.