Viktor Sanikidze

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Viktor Sanikidze
Player information
birthday	April 1, 1986 (34 years and 152 days)
place of birth	Tbilisi , Soviet Union
size	203 cm
position	Small forward
NBA draft	2004 , 42nd Pick Atlanta Hawks
Club information
society	CAI Saragossa
league	League ACB
Clubs as active
2003–2006 JDA Dijon 2006–2007 CB Estudiantes Madrid 2007–2008 BK Dinamo Tiflis 2008–2009 Tartu Rock 2009–2012 Canadian Solar Bologna 2012–2013 Montepaschi Siena Since 2013 CAI Saragossa 0
National team
Since 02005	Georgia

Viktor Sanikidze ( Georgian ვიქტორ სანიკიძე ; born April 1, 1986 in Tbilisi , Georgian SSR ) is a Georgian basketball player . He was selected as an 18-year-old junior player in the NBA Draft 2004, but later never played in the most highly endowed US professional league, the NBA , but at various European clubs. From 2009 he played for four years in the Italian Serie A , where he became Italian champion in 2013 with Montepaschi Siena. Since 2013 he has been playing for CAI Saragossa again in the Spanish ACB league , where he was already active for CB Estudiantes in the 2006/07 season.

Career

After Sanikidse had spent a few months at the Junior College Globe Institute of Technology in New York City as a 15-year-old , Sanikidse moved from his hometown to the squad of the French first division club Jeanne d'Arc from Dijon in Burgundy , which at the time had several Georgian players began. During this time, Sanikidze reached the final game of the FIBA EuroCup Challenge 2004 with the club , in which the young man Sanikidse was not used and which was lost against the German representative Mitteldeutscher BC , in whose ranks there was another compatriot from Sanikidze with Manutschar Markoishvili . In the following NBA draft, he was selected, somewhat surprisingly, already at the age of 18 by the Atlanta Hawks in the second round, who gave him on the same day in an exchange to the San Antonio Spurs , who subsequently owned the NBA rights to Sanikidse. At Sanikidse, however, injury problems with his knees occurred early on, which had to be treated surgically, so that he did not complete a championship game in France in the 2005/06 season.

After Sanikidse had recovered and in 2006 won Division B of the U20 European Championship as a tournament MVP with the Georgian junior national team and thus promotion to Division A, he moved to the Spanish ACB league to MMT Estudiantes from Madrid . At this club he was used in just under a third of the championship games and also had to struggle with appendicitis . Estudiantes reached the Final Four tournament of the FIBA Euro Cup , in which he was only used for twelve minutes in the final defeat in the game for third place against Virtus Bologna. After an appearance in the NBA Summer League in the jersey of the San Antonio Spurs, he played in the 2007/08 season in his home country at BK Dinamo Tbilisi, in which he was awarded as MVP of the Georgian championship season. In the 2008/09 season Sanikidze then played for the Estonian champions Tartu Rock, where he played with his fellow countryman Giorgi Zinzadse and with whom he lost the championship final in Estonia. In the EuroChallenge 2008/09, as the FIBA ​​Euro Cup was now called, Sanikidze again made unpleasant acquaintance with the eventual title winner Virtus Bologna, who eliminated Tartu from the competition as group winners in the preliminary round.

Virtus Bologna then signed Sanikidze for the 2009/10 season. With this club he reached the Italian cup final in 2010, which was lost to the dominant series champion and double winner Montepaschi Siena . In the play-offs for the Italian championship, the quarter-finals in 2010 and 2011 were the final destination. In 2010, the Georgian national team qualified for the finals for the 2011 European basketball championship for the first time . At the tournament in Lithuania in 2011, after two preliminary round victories , they reached the intermediate round of the twelve best teams, in which, however, they remained without a win and were eliminated from the tournament. In 2012, Sanikidse moved within Serie A to serial champion Montepaschi from Siena , with whom he also played at the highest European club level in the ULEB Euroleague 2012/13 . Montepaschi was able to defend his title again, but after the end of the season almost all players' contracts were terminated for financial reasons. In 2016, Siena was subsequently revoked the championship it had won. After the European Championship finals in 2013 , in which Georgia and Sanikidse were eliminated in the preliminary round this time, he signed another contract in the Spanish ACB league at the end of September 2013, this time playing for CAI from Saragossa .

Web links

• ACB.COM: Historial de V. Sanikidze - player profile on the websites of the ACB League ( Spanish )
• Sanikidze, VIKTOR - Statistics on the websites of the ULEB ( English )
• archive.fiba.com: Players - Viktor SANIKIDZE (GEO) - Overview of participation in FIBA tournaments (English)
• Legabasket: Viktor Sanikidze - player profile on the statistics pages of Serie A ( Italian )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Viktor Sanikidze - Dijon - Joueurs - Pro A - LNB.fr. Ligue Nationale de Basket (France) , accessed October 9, 2011 (French, LNB player profile). 
2. ↑ Dijon - 2004/5 - Equipes - Pro A - LNB.fr. Ligue Nationale de Basket (France) , accessed October 9, 2011 (French, roster 2004/5). 
3. ↑ Mitteldeutscher BC 84-68 SAOS JDA Dijon / FIBA ​​Europe Cup Men 2004. FIBA Europe , March 28, 2004, accessed on October 9, 2011 (English, match report). 
4. ↑ Player Profile: Victor Sanikidze, Georgia. FIBA Europa , July 17, 2004, accessed October 9, 2011 . 
5. ↑ Tako Khelaia: NBA, a Goal for Viktor Sanikidze. (No longer available online.) Finchannel.com, September 5, 2011, archived from the original on October 14, 2013 ; accessed on October 9, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ^ Georgia win Division B title. FIBA Europe , July 23, 2006, accessed October 9, 2011 . 
7. ↑ ACB: V. Sanikidze. Liga ACB , accessed October 9, 2011 (Spanish, game statistics 2006/07). 
8. ↑ Europe Press: Viktor Sanikidze, operado esta tarde de urgencia por una apendicitis aguda. Liga ACB , March 13, 2007, accessed October 9, 2011 (Spanish). 
9. ↑ MONTEPASCHI signs Sanikidze to multi-year deal. (No longer available online.) ULEB Euroleague , July 11, 2012, archived from the original on January 24, 2013 ; accessed on July 12, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ↑ Siena's championship title revoked , Sport1 from October 7, 2016
11. ↑ CAI ZARAGOZA announces Viktor Sanikidze. (No longer available online.) ULEB , September 20, 2013, formerly in the original ; accessed on October 13, 2013 .  ( 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.