FRANKLIN \u2013 Italy will welcome a bit more local flavor this EuroLeague basketball season. Franklin\u2019s Garrison Mathews signed a year-long contract to play for Olympia Milano, the country\u2019s premier team in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague.<\/p>\n
Mathews, a Franklin High graduate and Lipscomb University record-setter, plans to head to Italy in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited about the opportunity,\u201d Mathews said Monday. \u201cI didn\u2019t think I\u2019d ever play (overseas), but I got a couple calls with some great offers that were too hard to pass up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mathews is coming off a 15-game stint this past NBA season with the Indiana Pacers after playing the previous three seasons in Atlanta. The local standout has played seven years in the NBA with 65 starts over his 329 career games. He\u2019s averaged 17.3 minutes, while his career averages include 6.4 points on a .382 3-point shooting percentage.<\/p>\n
Mathews has carved out a role as a premier sharpshooter over his professional career. He\u2019s made 484 3-pointers in the NBA with one of his best overall seasons coming in 2021-22 when he played in 65 games with Houston averaging 10 points per game in 26.3 minutes each outing. In 2023-24, Mathews played in 66 games with Atlanta and even led the league late in the season in 3-point shooting percentage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started out really well in (Atlanta) and then got benched the last two months, so that was tough,\u201d Mathews said describing the last two seasons in the NBA. \u201cAt the end of the day, it didn\u2019t work out. My ultimate goal is to have a good year and then hopefully get an opportunity to come back to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mathews admitted that after not re-signing in the NBA this summer, the 29-year-old was fostering ideas of hanging up his laces. He\u2019s embraced the added time in the greater Nashville area \u2013 \u201chome\u201d as Mathews says \u2013 for the first time in his pro career after Indiana released him in December. He said he\u2019s used the time to reflect while he has a home built in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese last six months or so being back home has been really nice for me, just being able to spend time with my family and see old friends again,\u201d Mathews said. \u201cDamn, though, if I didn\u2019t start missing it over the last couple months.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just excited to get to hoop again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mathews was a multisport star at Franklin before a four-year career at Lipscomb.<\/p>\n
Mathews guided the Bisons to an NCAA Tournament berth in 2018 and led Lipscomb to the National Invitational Tournament championship game for the first time in 2019. He finished with a Lipscomb Division I-era best 2,478 points at the Nashville school but went undrafted before signing a two-way contract with the Washington Wizards in the summer of 2019 to begin his professional career.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll join an Italian team now that includes another local player in Darius Thompson, a Blackman graduate from Murfreesboro.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember him whooping me in high school,\u201d Mathews said with a laugh. \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to getting to play with him and everybody else, though. I think this will be good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again, Mathews reiterated how he hopes his time with Olympia Milano will help lead him back onto an NBA roster.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just never know, but hopefully I can get a chance to get back here,\u201d Mathews said. \u201cI\u2019m just going to focus on what I can do this year and enjoy this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new season for Mathews and Olympia Milano will begin later next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRANKLIN \u2013 Italy will welcome a bit more local flavor this EuroLeague basketball season. Franklin\u2019s Garrison Mathews signed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,219959,7168,98058,417039,85],"class_list":["post-845848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-euroleague","tag-franklin","tag-garrison-mathews","tag-olympia-milano","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845848","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=845848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}