{"id":482303,"date":"2026-02-15T21:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T21:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/482303\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T21:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T21:06:07","slug":"wade-baldwin-i-wanted-to-kill-de-colo-horton-tucker-is-one-of-a-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/482303\/","title":{"rendered":"Wade Baldwin: \u201cI wanted to kill De Colo, Horton Tucker is one of a kind\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Eurohoops team\/\u00a0info@eurohoops.net<\/a><\/p>\n

Last season, Wade Baldwin helped Fenerbah\u00e7e<\/a> win the treble, including the EuroLeague, the Turkish League, and the Turkish Cup.<\/p>\n

Now, Fenerbah\u00e7e<\/a> is chasing the same goals again, pushing hard and leading both competitions in the standings.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Eurohoops, Baldwin reflected on the pressure of expectations and the significance of Fenerbah\u00e7e\u2019s successful history:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you come to Fenerbah\u00e7e, you have to believe and understand that you are only competing to make the Final Four and win championships. You hold yourself to a certain standard. Other clubs\u2019 goals might be to make the playoffs or just be over .500, but here you look around, you see players from the past \u2014 star after star, legend after legend \u2014 and you want to become one of those guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

After winning the treble, the Istanbul team made several key changes, with players like Marko Guduric<\/a> and Nigel Hayes-Davis leaving the club, while newcomers such as Talen Horton-Tucker joined and immediately made an impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cTalen is simply a hungry player. He has a positive mentality about where his feet are in the EuroLeague, and that shows his character and professionalism. It\u2019s not easy to be, in a way, kicked out of the NBA at 24 years old, then come and adapt to the European way of playing basketball. Some players still have their minds in America instead of here. But Talen is 99.9 percent locked in on Fenerbah\u00e7e and Turkey.<\/p>\n

When you have players committed mentally, it\u2019s easy to become a good team. He is one of a kind in Europe. There\u2019s no one with his ability to attack the basket. He has unique athleticism, so it\u2019s very easy to play with a player like Talen. Of course, there are several players like him on this team. That\u2019s why it\u2019s such a pleasure to be on a team like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nando De Colo also rejoined the team mid-season and proved to be a valuable asset from the start.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we look back at my career, that\u2019s a guy I wanted to kill. I\u2019m saying this with complete honesty. Nando De Colo is a legend \u2014 a Fenerbah\u00e7e and European legend. I\u2019m lacing my shoes up every night playing against De Colo, and I\u2019m like, \u2018I\u2019m f***ing killing this guy.\u2019 That was the goal. So becoming his teammate feels like a breath of fresh air for me. You say to yourself, \u2018Now we\u2019re together, we can look for ways to win together.\u2019 The game becomes much easier. As a veteran and a legend, he found success easily. He\u2019s a tremendous asset and pickup, and we will need him more than ever throughout the season,\u201d Baldwin said.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Eurohoops team\/\u00a0info@eurohoops.net Last season, Wade Baldwin helped Fenerbah\u00e7e win the treble, including the EuroLeague, the Turkish League,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-482303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482303","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=482303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}