{"id":416970,"date":"2026-01-16T13:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T13:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/416970\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T13:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T13:28:11","slug":"cavs-draft-pick-stashed-in-europe-just-made-basketball-history-in-euroleague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/416970\/","title":{"rendered":"Cavs’ draft pick stashed in Europe just made basketball history in EuroLeague"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cavs’ draft pick stashed in Europe just made basketball history in EuroLeague<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> used the No. 58 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft on a player they had no intention of bringing over from Europe immediately.<\/p>\n

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And now that guy, Saliou Niang, just made first-of-its-kind basketball history in the EuroLeague.<\/p>\n

Niang plays for Virtus Bologna out of Italy, and on Thursday, he had an incredible game as part of the second-best basketball competition in the world.<\/p>\n

Taking on the team from Dubai, Niang put up 17 points and 17 rebounds.<\/p>\n

He’s the first non-big to ever have a 17-17 game in EuroLeague history.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Why Wemby went bald with his Spurs teammate<\/a><\/p>\n

Niang is 21 years old and originally from Italy.<\/p>\n

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He measures 6-foot-6, a lanky and talented wing player.<\/p>\n

Niang hasn’t been putting up numbers this big most of the season, but a flash like this shows what he’s capable of.<\/p>\n

It’ll be interesting to see where the Cavs go with him after this season. It seems like it’d make sense to at least get Niang to Summer League and go from there.<\/p>\n

For now, they’re likely watching with pride and intrigue in their draft pick.<\/p>\n

More NBA news:\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cavs’ draft pick stashed in Europe just made basketball history in EuroLeague originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,17603,219959,219962,219963,219958,85,219961,219960,218316],"class_list":{"0":"post-416970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","12":"tag-euroleague","13":"tag-johnathan-motley","14":"tag-nikola-milutinov","15":"tag-saliou-niang","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-virtus-bologna","18":"tag-walter-tavares","19":"tag-wemby"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}