Nikolajevs: Growing into a Basketball Player in Daugavpils Is Hard, but the Drive Is There

Ritvars Nikolajevs, a 19-year-old forward from Daugavpils, plays this season for the youth squad of the Riga club Rīgas Zeļļi and at the same time for Gulbenes Buki, the silver medallists of Latvia's National League (LBL2, the second tier of Latvian basketball). In an interview with the portal Sportacentrs.com, he described how he made it to the setup of a professional club and why he considers it hard for a basketball player to grow up in Daugavpils.

Games in Gulbene

Before the season, Rīgas Zeļļi agreed with Gulbenes Buki that the Vidzeme team would become the club's nominal farm team so that young players would get game practice. In the Latvian–Estonian League, Nikolajevs has played three games for Zeļļi so far, averaging seven and a half minutes and 3.7 points. For Buki he has played close to 30 minutes a game. On Thursday in a National League game in Valmiera, Gulbenes Buki beat the Bertāni Valmiera Basketball School team 95:78, and Nikolajevs scored 18 points and grabbed 13 rebounds.

He called the new team easy to adapt to: coach Raimonds Gabrāns draws up plays before the game, at halftime or in a timeout, and the emphasis is clear from the first game.

The road from Daugavpils

Nikolajevs says he belongs to Daugavpils. When the city had no men's team, he played in the third division of the Latvian Basketball League for a team from Krāslava, travelling to training with coach Raits Timma. A team later appeared in Daugavpils too. Coach Guntis Endzels helped him a great deal, and they began training almost every day.

On development in Daugavpils, the player said it is very hard because there is no well-developed youth system like, for example, in Valmiera. He ended up at Rīgas Zeļļi after moving to Riga to study: at first he trained with the team, and talks about joining began in December. The biggest change was reduced playing time, while the skill of the players and their everyday professionalism came as a surprise.