“If possible, my goal is to return to Japan. Some negotiations are underway, but I leave it open. It’s still early,” Balvín told ČTK during the Coach Clinic camp he organized today in Prague. “I hope that I will be clear by the middle of the summer, so that I can have peace of mind. But if something interesting comes up, I will not resist anything. We will see,” added the representative pivot.
Although the former player of Sevilla, Bayern Munich, Gran Canaria or Bilbao struggled to get used to his engagement in Japan at the beginning, he gradually came to like the land of the rising sun. “I would do it again. It was an interesting experience,” said Balvín.
“Japan is not much talked about in basketball, but I was surprised that their league is better than I expected. There are many foreigners here who played in Euroleague or Eurocup for quite good teams. And they didn’t retire there to finish their careers. They’re in their early thirties and in their productive years,” described the twenty-nine-year-old player.
National team teammate Patrik Auda, who works in Yokohama, also helped him acclimatize in Japan. He will also play in the B-Corsairs team next season. “Páta helped me a lot in the beginning. It’s true that I had big adaptation problems in the beginning and it was a big culture shock. But thanks to the fact that I was almost two and a half hours apart from him, it was good in the end,” he said to Balvín, who missed Charlie the dog terribly.
He assessed the first season in Japan as full of changes. In addition to acclimatization, he also worked on an injured big toe, and over the course of the year his team was quarantined several times due to the coronavirus. “Toward the end of the season, I caught on and got used to the style there. I had problems with that at the beginning. I’m used to playing team basketball, and here they suddenly gave me the ball to take fifteen or twenty . shot in every game. That was a challenge for me that was a shock, but also a new challenge,” said Balvín.
Even before the preparation of the national team for the qualification window for advancing to the 2023 World Cup, Balvin organized a traditional training camp for coaches at Folimance in Prague. Bilbao coach Álex Mumbrú, fitness expert Roberto Molina and Opava coach Petr Czudek lectured at the event called Coach Clinic.
“It’s good to know that Czech coaches are interested in teaching themselves. Álex is the coach who helped me the most in the low post game and shows that he understands the players. Roberto is my personal fitness coach in tag -day, which I respect a lot. Čouda, on the other hand, from the position of a former quarterback, knows exactly how to work with pivots,” added the 217-centimeter-tall basketball player.