(updates the third paragraph) Madrid, Sep 6 (EFE) .- Marcelinho Huertas, the Brazilian base of Lenovo Tenerife, will receive this Wednesday, September 8 – for the second time in a row – the Efe Trophy for the Best Latin American Player of the Endesa League, an award that he mathematically achieved four days before the end of the regular phase and that recognizes his great contribution to the successes of the island team, one of the revelationsº in the ACB.
For the third year in a row, the ACB and the EFE Agency, leader in Latin America, present this official award to distinguish the best of the Latin American players who participate in Liga Endesa. The Argentine Nicolás Laprovittola was the first to register his name in the 2018-19 campaign when he was a member of the Joventut de Badalona, and Huertas has achieved those corresponding to the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons.
The veteran Brazilian game director (Sao Paulo, 1983) finished in first position in the final classification with 139 points, beating Cuban center Jasiel Rivero (86), from Hereda San Pablo Burgos, and Argentine Nico Laprovittola (84), from Barcelona.
Each day, an international jury made up of journalists, players and coaches from Latin American basketball voted the three best individual performances with three, two and one point and, based on this vote, a weekly ranking was drawn up that was accumulated in a global ranking. .
A total of twenty players managed to score a point from the first day, although it was the Brazilian Huertas who, thanks to his enormous regularity throughout the course, managed to revalidate the Efe Trophy with great authority.
The Lenovo Tenerife point guard, also chosen as the Best Base of the competition, received the weekly recognition for the Latin American MVP in a total of five days, two in the first round (5 and 13) and another three in the second (25, 26 and 36).
The ACB highlighted that Marcelinho Huertas is going through “one of the sweetest gaming moments of his career” in Spain, which has allowed him to enter the current Top10 in the competition’s valuation (10th, with 15.8 credits) with an average 14.2 points (11th) and 6.2 assists (2nd, on the heels of Dani Pérez) per game.
In addition, during this 2020-21 Endesa League, the Brazilian established himself as the second highest historical assistant in the Spanish competition, just behind Pablo Laso in the global ranking.
Up to fifteen players won the Best Latin American Player of the Day award during this campaign. Several of them repeated, the case of Jasiel Rivero, Vítor Benite, Nico Brussino, Nico Laprovittola, James Feldeine and Facundo Campazzo, who won it up to three different occasions, while Bruno Fitipaldo, Ángel Delgado and Gabriel Deck settled for two and Eulis Báez, Juanpi Vaulet, Leo Meindl and Leandro Bolmaro also achieved such an honor during the 2020-21 season.
Huertas will receive the Efe Trophy on Wednesday, September 8 at the Santo Domingo Convent in San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain), at 14:15 local time (13:15 GMT).