Six naturalised players in one year: what exactly are we building?

When Moses Wright takes the floor against Austria on 30 August in the EuroBasket pre-qualifiers, he will be the sixth naturalised player in a Macedonian shirt since August 2025. That is half a standard roster for one game, assembled in a little over twelve months. Twice in the same window two different naturalised players featured: in November Omari Moore against Azerbaijan and Jacob Wiley against Ireland, and this summer DJ Stewart against Ireland and Nate Sestina against Luxembourg. The specialist site BasketNews called this a mockery of FIBA's rules, which is an understated way of saying something true: the Federation hands out passports faster than it builds a team. The results back nobody up. We have not been at a European Championship since 2015, when we finished nineteenth, and we have never reached the main tournament of a World Cup at all. Who answers for that - the guest who plays three games, or the people who have been signing for years?

Moses Wright: "I have been training as if I were Macedonian for a while now"

The other side of the same story is that Wright is no filler. He was one of the best centres in the EuroLeague last season, and next season we will see him in an Olimpia Milano shirt. In Skopje he is already training with his new teammates. "I like the team and the way I have been accepted in the national side, I have been training as if I were Macedonian for a while now," he said. The player he knows best is Nenad Dimitrijevic, whom he faced in the EuroLeague. Of the game against Austria in Vienna he says the opponent has changes in the roster and quality young players. So the problem was never that good players are coming. The problem is that each of them arrives alone, for one window, and then disappears before the next one has time to learn the previous one's name.

Noah Farrakhan at MZT: "Skopje is a beautiful city, it literally feels like home"

The Macedonian champions are building the 2026/2027 season around Noah Farrakhan, an American guard expected to be the main figure for "the storks". His first impressions are entirely ordinary, and that is precisely why they sound genuine: "Skopje really is a beautiful city, especially Aerodrom where I spend most of my time, and the people are wonderful." He says the team plays fast basketball and the ball moves well. The biggest challenge is the FIBA Europe Cup. "Playing in Europe is a huge challenge. There is no room to relax," he says, and asked whether he is ready to be a leader he answers briefly: "Yes, absolutely." MZT in Europe is always a story you enter with hope and leave with a bill for what it cost.

Valanciunas said out loud what everyone in Lithuania was whispering

Lithuania is a basketball power, and its best-known centre said publicly that something inside is not working. Jonas Valanciunas, who returned home at 34 by signing for Zalgiris after a long NBA career, skipped this qualifying window. Part of the reason is private, but part of it is not. "When everything is fine, you usually do not run from difficulties. And not everything with the national team was really that fine," he told BasketNews. He immediately specified that this is not about hotels, buses or charter flights: "We can sleep in a worse hotel too. But sometimes it is about basic human consideration, about the schedule." He also openly questioned the position of Federation president Mindaugas Balciunas. After the first round Lithuania are 3-3 and fourth in Group J, behind Turkey (6-0), Italy (5-1) and Serbia (4-2). Only three teams go through to the 2027 World Cup in Qatar. So they will need five wins from six matches against Turkey, Serbia and Bosnia. A story that reads in the Balkans without translation.

Doncic kept the Lakers in Ljubljana because of the hospitals

The Los Angeles Lakers were meant to fly out of Ljubljana on Monday morning. They did not, because Luka Doncic asked his teammates for a favour. First they went to the Ljubljana maternity hospital, where they took photographs, signed autographs and greeted mothers with newborns. Then, through the underground corridors, they carried on to the Paediatric Clinic to see seriously ill children. Those whose health allowed it later joined them on the court beside the clinic. The players stayed a long time, talked, took pictures and shot baskets with the children, and brought gifts too. Departure was pushed back to 3.10pm. This is the end of a four-day camp in Slovenia that included training sessions, Bled and a visit to the court of his childhood. A small country, the biggest star, and a piece of news that needed no marketing agency to work.