Nikita Alexandrovich Kurbanow

Nikita Kurbanov
Player information
Full name	Nikita Alexandrovich Kurbanow
birthday	5th October 1986
place of birth	Moscow, Soviet Union
size	203 cm
position	Small forward / power forward
Club information
society	PBK CSKA Moscow
league	PBL / VTB
Jersey number	41
Clubs as active
2002–2012 PBK CSKA Moscow → 2005 Locomotive Rostov → 2008 UNICS Kazan → 2008–2009 BK Spartak Saint Petersburg 2012–2013 BK Spartak Saint Petersburg 2013–2014 UNICS Kazan 2014–2015 Locomotive Kuban Since 2015 CSKA Moscow 00000 00000 0
National team
Since 2006 00	Russia

Nikita Alexandrowitsch Kurbanow ( Russian: Никита Александрович Курбанов ; born October 5, 1986 in Moscow , RSFSR ) is a Russian basketball player . Kurbanow has played for the dominant Russian serial champion PBK ZSKA from his hometown since his youth , but has already been awarded three times to other Russian clubs. As a Russian national player , he took part in the 2009 and 2015 European basketball championships .

Career

Kurbanow was accepted into the junior team of CSKA Moscow in 2002. In 2004 he scored a double-double at the U18 European Championship for the Russian youth selection with an average of 21.1 points and 10.1 rebounds per game and was included in the selection of the best players of the tournament. At the tournament victory of the Russian junior selection at the U20 European Championship in 2005, he was named Most Valuable Player of the tournament. Because of these personal awards, Kurbanow has long been considered the most talented young Russian player of the year 1986, who has other Russian players of international class with Anton Ponkraschow and Nikita Schabalkin . At the beginning of the 2005/06 season he was loaned to Lokomotiw from Rostov , he returned to CSKA in November 2005, where he played in the men's team from then on.

After he had already been used in individual Russian league games of the Superleague Russia in the 2004/05 season , Kurbanow got in the 2005/06 season in the highest European club competition ULEB Euroleague 2005/06 season. At the Final Four tournament of this competition, he was on the field for a good 11 minutes in the semifinals against FC Barcelona . In the final victory over defending champion Maccabi Tel Aviv , the 19-year-old Kurbanow was no longer used. In the Russian competitions they defended the double from the previous year and won the triple in 2006 . In 2007 they won the Russian double again, but lost the final in the ULEB Euroleague 2006/07 against Panathinaikos Athens . Kurbanow only had short appearances under coach Ettore Messina in the decisive play-offs and finals of the Euroleague. In contrast to his teammates from the junior selection Ponkraschow and Schabalkin, Kurbanow was not nominated by national coach David Blatt for the squad of the men's national team at the 2007 European Championship , where Russia surprisingly won the title in the final against hosts Spain . Instead, Kurbanow took part in the 2007 Summer Universiade with the selection of Russian students . In the 2007/08 season he was loaned to the Russian runner-up UNICS from Kazan in February 2008 , who appropriately derives its tradition from a university team. With UNICS he was eliminated in the quarter-final play-off of the Russian championship. The team suffered the same fate in the second most important European club competition ULEB Cup 2007/08 , where they were eliminated from the eventual finalist Akasvasyu Girona in the Elite Eight final tournament .

Kurbanow's stake in UNICS Kazan had not increased significantly and he was loaned to Spartak from Saint Petersburg for the 2008/09 season. There he had more working time and after a sixth place in the main round of the Russian championship you could move into the semi-finals of the play-offs and finally finished fourth after losing the series for third place against Kurbanov's previous club UNICS. Subsequently, Kurbanow was also included in the national squad for the EM 2009 , where the defending champion lost in the quarter-finals against the eventual finalists Serbia and then reached seventh place. He returned to CSKA for the 2009/10 season. In the Russian series champions he remained a supplementary player, especially in the ULEB Euroleague 2009/10 he rarely had more than 5 minutes playing time per game. After another double in Russia and winning the newly created Eastern European VTB United League , they lost the semifinals of the Euroleague against eventual title winners FC Barcelona and after a win in extra time in the small final over KK Partizan Belgrade, they came in third. In the 2010/11 season, CSKA was initially coached by Duško Vujošević , previously long-time coach at KK Partizan. Even under coach Vujošević, who as a former junior selection coach is said to promote younger players, Kurbanow could not play himself in the foreground. Instead, ZSKA failed to succeed in the ULEB Euroleague 2010/11 and they were eliminated after the preliminary round and for the first time in nine years they did not reach the Final Four tournament in this competition. After a change of coach, the title win was celebrated in the Russian championship, while the final game in the VTB United League was just lost to the Russian runner-up BK Chimki .

During the lockout in the NBA 2011, ZSKA strengthened itself with the contractless Andrei Kirilenko and Nenad Krstić , who stayed with CSKA even after the lockout ended, and was henceforth the favorite for the title in the ULEB Euroleague. Kurbanow saw even less playing time than before and was used internationally in only four games in the preliminary and intermediate rounds and in two play-off games of the quarter-finals of the Euroleague. In the final four tournament of the ULEB Euroleague 2011/12 , in which CSKA surprisingly lost the final game in the final minute against Olympiacos , he was not used at all. With hardly any match practice, he could not qualify for the final squad of the Russian national team for the 2012 Olympic Games . After the end of the season, in which CSKA again won the Russian championship in the PBL and the VTB United League in 2011/12 , he moved to Russian competitor BK Spartak from Saint Petersburg. A year later he left Spartak and moved again to UNICS Kazan, to which he had also been previously awarded.

Achievements and Awards

• Winner ULEB Euroleague: 2006
• Russian champion: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2012, 2012
• Russian cup winner: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2014
• VTB United League winner: 2010, 2012

Web links

• [1] - Player profile on the ULEB website ( English )
• archive.fiba.com: Players - Nikita KURBANOV (RUS) - Overview of participation in FIBA tournaments (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rodriguez Voted Best In Zaragoza. FIBA Europa , July 20, 2004, accessed October 29, 2011 . 
2. ↑ Kourbanov Heads All Tournament Team. FIBA Europa , July 17, 2005, accessed October 29, 2011 .