Esteban Batista

Esteban Batista
Player information
Full name	Esteban Damián Batista Hernández
birthday	2nd September 1983
place of birth	Montevideo, Uruguay
size	208 cm
position	Power Forward / Center
Club information
society	CA Welcome Montevideo
Clubs as active
2001–2002 CA Welcome Montevideo 2003 Salto Uruguay FC 2003–2004 CB Pozuelo de Alarcón 2004 Nacional Montevideo 2004–2005 Club Trouville 2005 Aguas de Calpe 2005–2007 Atlanta Hawks 2007–2008 Maccabi Tel Aviv 2008 Triumph Ljuberzy 2009 CD Libertad de Sunchales 2009– 2011 Baloncesto Fuenlabrada 2011 Caja Laboral 2011–2013 Anadolu Efes SK 2013–2014 Pınar Karşıyaka 2014–2015 Panathinaikos Athens 2015–2016 Beikong Flying Dragons ( ChBA ) 2016 EA7 Armani Milan 2016–2017 Beikong Flying Dragons 2017 Umana Reyer Venezia Since 2017 CA Welcome Montevideo 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 0
National team
Since 02003	Uruguay

Esteban Damián Batista Hernández (born September 2, 1983 in Montevideo , Montevideo Department ) is a Uruguayan - Spanish basketball player . Batista is considered to be the first basketball player in the South American state to play in the NBA , the highest-paying professional league in the United States . After two years with the Atlanta Hawks, Batista continued his career in 2007 in European professional leagues in Israel , which belong to the continental association FIBA Europe , and Russia . In Spain , where he had played before his NBA career, the Uruguayan international acquired Spanish citizenship in 2011 . In the 2013/14 season he played for Panathinaikos Athens in the A1 Ethniki .

Career

Batista began to play basketball in terms of performance relatively late at the age of 17, after having previously tried his hand at sport as a soccer goalkeeper , among other things . As a fan of the traditional Uruguayan club CA Welcome, he took the bus 60 km from his former home, Playa Pascual, to the team's games in the capital. There they became aware of the 2.08 m tall giant and invited him to training. Batista learned quickly and worked hard so that he was allowed to play in the first team of CA Welcome from 2001. The Uruguayan championship was lost twice in 2001 and 2002 against Club Atlético Cordón in five games of the play-off final series. The following year he played for the club from Salto in 2003 and made his debut at the 2003 South American Basketball Championship in his hometown in the national team , which won a bronze medal and qualified for the 2003 American Championships . Batista then took part in the 2003 Pan American Games with Uruguay in the first half of August 2003 . In the qualifying tournament for the 2004 Olympic basketball tournament that followed in the second half of August , however, they were eliminated early after four defeats in the preliminary round.

After Batista already on trial at the Spanish first division club Joventut Badalona had graduated, the European giants secured Real Madrid the rights to Batista and took him under contract to him but in the European 2003/04 season to the Spanish third division of Pozuelo de Alarcón in to award the LEB 2 . As a non-European, Batista had a hard time getting one of the foreigner spots in Real's squad and was only able to prove himself to his colleagues in the top division in training games. In the European summer of 2004, Batista played in the Torneo Metropolitano, which was held for the first time, for the Club Nacional basketball team to qualify for the newly created Uruguaya de Básquetbol (LUB) league . However, Nacional lost the decisive play-off series against CSD Sayago. After Batista had missed a medal with Uruguay at the South American Championships in 2004 , he played in the LUB, which had changed its schedule to the international basketball calendar of the northern hemisphere, for Trouville, which, however, lost the semi-final series against his former team from Salto, which then for the first time won the title. Batista was named LUB Player of the Year. He returned to Spain in March 2005, where he made eight appearances in the second division LEB Oro for the Aguas club from Calpe . Batista could not save the promoted team from direct relegation as bottom of the table.

The American championship in 2005 with the Uruguayan national team marked the international breakthrough for Batista. Although Uruguay only won one of eight games, Batista impressed individually with 18 points and almost 16 rebounds per game. Although Batista had no experience in the NCAA and had not yet played first-class in Europe, he was signed by the NBA club Atlanta Hawks and thus became the first Uruguayan basketball player in the most important professional basketball league in the world. In the NBA, however, he was unable to establish himself as a supplementary player in 70 appearances in two seasons. At the South American Championship 2006 , Uruguay won the silver medal after a clear defeat in the final against Brazil . The following year Batista was part of the squad at the 2007 Pan American Games , where Uruguay secured the bronze medal. At the 2007 American Championships , the Celeste finished sixth after a total of three wins. After he had auditioned for the Boston Celtics in the summer of 2007 , Batista signed a contract with the top European club Maccabi from Tel Aviv for the 2007/08 season . In the top-ranking European club competition ULEB Euroleague 2007/08 , however, they lost the final against PBK CSKA Moscow . The series champion also surprisingly lost the final of the Israeli championship with one point difference to Hapoel Holon . At the South American Championship in 2008 , the Uruguayan national team and Batista won a silver medal again after losing to Argentina in the final . At the beginning of the following season 2008/09 Batista's contract in Israel was dissolved in November 2008 and he concluded a short-term contract with the Russian club Triumph from Lyubertsy in December 2008 . After the end of this contract he went back to South America in January 2009, where he played for CD Libertad from Sunchales in Argentina . In the Liga Nacional de Básquetbol it was enough for the defending champion to finish third. At the 2009 American Championships , the Uruguayan national team remained without another win after three preliminary round successes in the quarter-finals and thus missed an improvement in sixth place and the qualification for the 2010 World Cup .

For the 2009/10 season Batista returned to Spain and played in the ACB league for the club from Fuenlabrada . After twelve victories this season, however, it was only enough for the 16th and best non-relegation place in the top Spanish league. Batista was named player of the day three times this season as the most effective player and at the end of the main round was the best player in this category in the ACB 2009/10 league with 8.3 rebounds per game. At the South American Championship in 2010 , after the semi-final defeat by defending champion Argentina, the Uruguayan selection won a bronze medal. The following season, Fuenlabrada had a much better start to the season, but at the beginning of 2011, the league competitor and Spanish champion Caja Laboral from Vitoria-Gasteiz bought Batista from his contract. In the ULEB Euroleague 2010/11 they lost the quarter-final play-offs against their former club Maccabi Tel Aviv. In the Spanish championship this time there was already a meeting in the semi-final series with FC Barcelona , which had previously been the final pairing three times in a row. Barcelona clearly defeated defending champions Caja Laboral in three games. At the 2011 American Championship , Uruguay again lost all intermediate round matches and only finished seventh after two preliminary round victories. Batista had acquired Spanish citizenship in the meantime, but as a member of the EU , he became interesting for clubs from other European leagues. So Batista broke his contract, which was still running for three years, and switched to Anadolu Efes SK for the 2011/12 season in Türkiye Basketbol Ligi in Istanbul . In the ULEB Euroleague 2011/12 they played little successfully in the round of the 16 best teams and were eliminated, even in the national championship the Turkish record champions had to admit defeat in the final series for the championship against local rivals Beşiktaş Milangaz . At the beginning of the 2012/13 season, Anadolu Efes released Batista from his ongoing contract, but he could not find a new club. Instead, he played a few more missions at Efes for the injured Stanko Barać . After Batista had not participated in the South American Championships in 2012 , he was again represented in the Uruguayan selection at the American Championships in 2013 . The national team failed to win the second round for the fifth time in a row and, after finishing seventh, again missed participation in a global final. After two untitled seasons with Anadolu Efes, as with Maccabi and Caja Laboral before, Batista switched to Turkish league rivals and EuroChallenge finalists Pınar Karşıyaka from Izmir for the 2013/14 season .

Awards

As part of the honors of the best Uruguayan athletes of the period 2009-2010 ("Deportista del Año") he was awarded on March 28, 2011 by the Comité Olímpico Uruguayo in the Teatro Solís as the best athlete of 2010 in the category "basketball".

Web links

Commons : Esteban Batista  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• BATISTA, ESTEBAN - Statistics on the websites of the ULEB ( English )
• Esteban Batista - Overview of participation in international FIBA tournaments on archive.fiba.com (English)
• Esteban Batista - player profile on basketball-reference.com
• ACB.COM: Esteban Batista - player profile on the websites of the Liga ACB ( Spanish )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Esteban Batista ya es español. Liga ACB , May 4, 2011, accessed on January 12, 2014 (Spanish, media info Caja Laboral). 
2. ↑ Player information on www. paobc.gr
3. ^ ^{A b} Faustino Sáez: Los viajes de Batista. El País , November 17, 2011, accessed January 12, 2014 (Spanish). 
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Ricardo González: Batista, de Pozuelo a Tel Aviv pasando por la NBA. As , February 7, 2008, accessed January 12, 2014 (Spanish). 
5. ↑ FEB.es: BATISTA HERNANDEZ, ESTEBAN DAMIAN. Federación Española de Baloncesto , accessed January 12, 2014 (Spanish, player profile). 
6. ↑ Uruguayan Basketball, Teams, Scores, Stats, News, Standings: LUB: Season 2004-2005. Latinbasket.com, accessed January 12, 2014 ( seasonal summary). 
7. ↑ El Caja Laboral ficha a Batista y el Fuenlabrada ganará 900,000 euros. Marca , January 4, 2011, accessed January 12, 2014 (Spanish). 
8. ↑ Alfonso Azkorreta: La marcha de Batista obliga al Caja Laboral a remodelar su juego interior. El Correo , July 15, 2011, accessed January 12, 2014 (Spanish). 
9. ↑ Anadolu Efes loses Barac for 4-6 weeks; Batista returns. ULEB , October 24, 2012, accessed January 12, 2014 . 
10. ↑ Esteban Batista - Turkish Basketball League Player. TBLStat.net, accessed on February 28, 2016 (English, player profile on statistics websites). 
11. ↑ El Comité Olímpico premió a los mejores deportistas  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Spanish) in El Observador, March 29, 2011, accessed March 15, 2014  
12. ↑ CEREMONIA “DEPORTISTA DEL AÑO 2009-2010” ( Memento of January 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (Spanish) at www.cou.org.uy, accessed on March 15, 2014