Trey Lyles, an NBA veteran from 0 to 100 in Europe

When Trey Lyles left the NBA after 10 seasons and landed in Madrid, where he would become the top scorer for Sergio Scariolo’s team and an enthusiast of the Spanish omelette, he asked for the number 0, a figure that symbolized a beginning, reminding him that his past no longer mattered: he was a rookie in Europe. Eight months later, the 30-year-old Canadian player stepped onto the bright floor of the OAKA. The 0 had reached the EuroLeague final. His entry into the game was thunderous: 21 points in the first two quarters.

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Olympiacos OLY

92

Real Madrid RMA

85

1	2	3	4	T
OLY	19	27	15	31	92
RMA	26	18	21	20	85

FINISHED

The power forward carried a team without big men. Olympiacos focused on him and managed to stop his scoring in the second half. Many minutes of drought until, with 26.8 seconds left, he made his first basket in these 20 minutes. The Canadian then made a free throw and missed the second, which allowed Campazzo to force three more free throws from which a play almost emerged to force overtime. He finished the game with a valuation of 30.

Lyles has been a key player for Real Madrid this season. The pride of his father, Thomas Lyles, who played basketball in Canada for the Saskatoon Storm, where he met Jasenka, the woman who would become Trey’s mother. Since he was born, his father played with him all the time. The former player worked in the entertainment industry and when the boy was seven years old they had to move to Indianapolis. Every morning, before dawn, little Trey would get up at five, go to his father’s bed and whisper if they could go practice. The man sighed, but he would get up and take the boy to shoot hoops.

Thomas took advantage of those early mornings to teach his son a lesson for life. “His training was tough, but he persevered. The reason I was so demanding with him was because I wanted him to understand what it meant to have a strong work ethic. And he understood it perfectly,” he explained at the time.

The boy grew up and in his last year of high school he won the state championship with averages of 23.7 points, 12.9 rebounds, and 3.5 assists and was named Mr. Basketball of Indiana, a school of great shooters. He was considered one of the best prospects and in 2015 he went to the University of Kentucky. There he found two centers better than him and his coach, John Calipari, converted him into a power forward after the starter, Alex Poythress, tore his ACL. A very tall lineup with two centers of 2.16m and 2.11m, and him, 2.09m, as a small forward. The team started to rack up wins and the Wildcats reached the NCAA Final Four at the gigantic Lucas Oil Stadium, with 70,000 spectators. In the semifinals, they lost to Wisconsin their first game of the season (38-1).

The Kentucky power forward was selected by Utah with the 12th pick in the 2015 draft. There he began a long career that took him to Utah (2015-2017), Denver (2017-2019), San Antonio (2019-2021), Detroit (2021-2022), and Sacramento (2022-2025), where he pushed Gianni Antetokounmpo and later got into a fight with Brook Lopez that cost him a one-game suspension. He is also a regular with the Canadian national team, with which he played the Paris Games alongside Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the latest NBA MVP. In Denver, he coincided with another genius, Nikola Jokic, whom he spoke about a few days ago saying he is “a wizard with the ball.” Lyles explained that when you play with him, you just want to do it again. Trey will stay in Madrid for another season. The omelette and an unfinished business with the EuroLeague are to blame.

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