{"id":498306,"date":"2026-02-23T06:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T06:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/498306\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T06:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T06:27:09","slug":"next-star-makes-nba-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/498306\/","title":{"rendered":"Next Star makes NBA debut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former NBL Next Star Rocco Zikarsky achieved a lifelong dream on Monday AEDT by making his NBA debut.<\/p>\n<p>The former Brisbane Bullet played four minutes off the bench for the Minnesota Timberwolves in their 135-108 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.<\/p>\n<p>During the four minutes of action at the Target Centre, the Queensland big man collected one rebound and played alongside fellow Australian Joe Ingles.<\/p>\n<p>Zikarsky, who was the 45th pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, is averaging 12.6 points, 7 rebounds and 1.9 blocks a game for the Iowa Wolves in the G League this season.<\/p>\n<p>The 19-year-old recently played in the G League Next Up Game at the 2026 NBA All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former NBL Next Star Rocco Zikarsky achieved a lifelong dream on Monday AEDT by making his NBA debut.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-498306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498306","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=498306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}