Karim Lopez Leaves Spain for NBL Next Stars Program As Europe’s Youth Talent Exodus Continues

Karim Lopez is yet another young prospect who has opted to part ways with his European club for either the NCAA and NIL money or the Australian NBL’s Next Star program. Can European clubs do anything to stop this trend?

Oct 10, 2023; Portland, OR, USA; New Zealand Breakers forward Dan Fotu (42) dribbles against the Portland Trail Blazers in the second half at Moda Center. Mandatory Credit: Jaime Valdez-USA TODAY Sports / Jaime Valdez-USA TODAY Sports

Karim Lopez, the top-ranked international prospect of the 2026 NBA Draft and future face of Mexican basketball has signed with the Australian National Basketball League’s New Zealand Breakers on a Next Stars contract. He departed Spanish club, Joventut Badalona. Lopez isn’t the only youth prospect who left Badalona - the development home of Ricky Rubio, Rudy Fernandez, and plenty of other great talents - this summer for better opportunities. Portuguese center Ruben Prey left for an NIL deal with Rick Pitino’s St. John’s. 

Beyond Badalona, plenty of other highly-rated international prospects are seeking greater pastures abroad. Kasparas Jakucionis, an 18-year-old Lithuanian point guard who put on an incredible display at recent FIBA and Adidas Next Generation tournaments left Barcelona for the University of Illinois. One of his primary foes in recent times, youth guard Egor Demin, left Real Madrid for BYU. Spanish youngster Izan Almansa left Real Madrid’s youth setup as a teenager for Overtime Elite, then G League Ignite, and has now signed as a Next Star with the Perth Wildcats. 

Long story short, except for historically great European prospects like Luka Doncic, staying in Europe hasn’t been the preferred development path for blossoming youngsters for quite a few years now. The launch of programs like the NBL Next Stars (2018-19), Overtime Elite (2021), and NCAA NIL money (2021) has accelerated this reality and made it a problem European basketball can no longer ignore. 

So, how can European basketball stop their talent from leaving?

For starters, there is no ignorance of this issue among European basketball executives, the media, and the clubs themselves. Everyone recognizes the rapid decline of youth prospects staying in Europe, it was a hot conversation topic at the 2024 EuroLeague Final Four and Adidas Next Generation Tournament. It was one of the questions EuroLeague CEO Paulius Motiejunas received at his Final Four press conference. 

“It’s not easy to find a solution,” Motiejunas said. “I know the salaries that the players make because I’ve been in this business and what they’re offering now is completely nuts and it breaks the market. There’s no motivation for the clubs to keep growing the young players.” 

The last part of that quote reveals a lot: “There’s no motivation for the clubs to keep growing the young players.”

Motiejunas is a former front office executive with Lithuanian club Zalgiris Kaunas. He knows that Europe’s basketball model only has one motivation - to win. European clubs are professional clubs. Their only goal is to win games and to win them as soon as possible. There’s no benefit to being a bad team, no draft, nothing. All that happens to these clubs is they lose money, and coaches, executives, and others tend to lose their jobs. Young players don’t help with that. The adage that rookies are usually bad is transferable to European basketball: players under the age of 25 and especially under the age of 23 are rarely good enough to help pro teams win. If they are, they’ve usually caught the eye of bigger teams elsewhere already. 

Winning is not the only motivation for growing young players in sports. Look at European soccer, where plenty of smaller clubs continue to invest heavily in youth development with the expectation that these players will leave for bigger clubs at some point in their careers. But, they go for a transfer fee, notable eight-figure sums of cash that these clubs are then able to take and re-invest in new young prospects, improved facilities, and more. European basketball has next to zero transfer market, and especially not one that runs deep enough for clubs to buy and sell youth players for a notable amount. Even when players leave for the NBA, the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement has set a hard cap on what teams can pay towards a player’s buyout, meaning a player often has to buy himself out of his European contract to pursue an NBA opportunity. 

As Motiejunas said, there is no motivation for clubs to keep growing young players. It does not help them win more games on the court, and it does not help them bring in revenue off the court either.

Then comes the question: how can European basketball incentivize youth development?

This problem is fixable, or at least, potential solutions do exist. One of the first things that needs to happen is they need to incentivize staying in Europe for the players, not just the clubs. An underlying issue here is that the options for prospects once they’re past the age of 18 are very limited in Europe. Organized club games stop at the U18 level. That leaves you with either being good enough for senior minutes - which is rare - or joining a lower division side on loan to get playing time, which isn’t ideal. 

ALBA Berlin Sporting Director Himar Ojeda has lamented the need for organized under-23 basketball among European clubs. This arguably has to be the first step in fixing the youth talent exodus. The most important thing for prospects, even after the influx of money into this level of basketball, is still playing time. Being on a team where they are guaranteed minutes, repetitions, and shots is what matters most, and Europe currently has zero way to offer that to players once they turn 19. EuroLeague, FIBA, and other governing bodies need to come together to make this happen. 

This competition can help incentivize player development for clubs as well. Offering financial prizes for winning under-23 trophies will make clubs interested in retaining quality players in this age range. The larger the incentive prize the more work they’ll dedicate to it, but as long as it’s there it does pose some incentive. 

Once staying in Europe is incentivized for players, the focus has to switch to the clubs. The first reason it’s hard for European clubs to benefit from having young players is because there is no salary cap in Europe. Without a salary cap, teams have to operate within the budget made available by their owners and generally sign all players to the same standard professional contract regardless of age. 

For example, Australia’s NBL can have the Next Stars program because it has a salary cap. Players' salaries and international travel are paid by the league, while domestic travel and accommodations are taken care of by the club.

Without a salary cap, and with teams playing in multiple leagues - domestic and continental - Europe has been unable to set up a similar program. If EuroLeague and other high-level competitions introduced a salary cap, they could propose a system where players under the age of 25 don’t count against the cap or only count up to a certain percentage of their agreed-upon salary. Alternatively, without a salary cap, the EuroLeague could offer kickbacks for registering youth players as well as playing them more often. 

Finally, every single governing basketball body in Europe needs to work together to develop the transfer market. Mandate more transparency in player salaries, contracts, and dealings among teams. This process remains largely opaque except to the most well-connected media insiders and is a disservice to all. A more transparent marketplace will create more innovation, make it easier for clubs to find and acquire talent, and help hash out an environment where the buying and selling of players - prospects and pros - is more beneficial to all. 

EuroLeague, FIBA, and leagues across Europe have themselves to blame for their rapid loss of young talent. As the rest of the basketball world has invested in and expanded development opportunities, Europe largely remained in a holding pattern and has refused to modernize its development systems. They can blame money, as Motiejunas did at May’s press conference, “I don’t think it’s really good for the young players to get these salaries and this money, at the age of 18, it’s always a risk,” he said. But if they continue to only lay blame, and not the foundation for solutions to this problem, it will only get worse and their influence on player development will continue to decline.

---

Want to join the discussion? Like Draft Digest on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on all the latest NBA Draft news. You can also meet the team behind the coverage.