Every season, NBA scouts spend countless hours watching tape of players from across the globe, meticulously analyzing each seemingly inconsequential detail of their games with surgical precision. Sometimes, these evaluations prove to make. Other times, a player’s strengths pop right off the screen.

In the case of Mario Hezonja, it takes a casual observer roughly 30 seconds of YouTube highlights to see just the type of player the 20-year-old shooting guard is: a tightly-wound ball of high-flying energy, ready to explode off the floor for a rim rattling dunk or step back and casually rise up for a 30-foot jumper that easily finds twine.

Put simply, the game looks like it comes to him remarkably easily, and that’s because his life has been devoted to the game since he was old enough to dribble a ball.

While his friends spent summer afternoons sprawled out on the sandy white beaches of Dubrovnik, Croatia, a young Hezonja baked on the blacktop near his home, putting up jump shots until his right elbow ached and his legs could hardly support his mature frame. He was consumed with the game of basketball from an early age, and his obsessive nature combined with his natural talent made him stand out immediately amongst his peers.

Pegged as one of the next great Croatian basketball products, Hezonja made his professional debut at the age of 13 for KK Dubrovnik. At first, his coaches groomed him to play the point guard position, honing in on his natural vision and ballhandling skills. But it didn’t take long for Hezonja, who experienced an early growth spurt and now measures a solid 6’8”, to outgrow the position.

After finishing primary school, a then 15-year-old Hezonja moved from his home on the southernmost tip of Croatia to the town of Zagreb, just southeast of the Slovenian border, to join a local club in 2010. It was there that he met another former point guard whose rapid growth forced him to change positions, eventual 2014 lottery pick and fellow countryman Dario Saric.

Saric, 16 years old at the time, was one of the only young prospects in the Balkans as decorated as Hezonja. Together, they spent much of the 2010-11 season playing for Zagreb’s junior team, and they led the team to a Euroleague Basketball Next Generation Tournament Championship that year; Saric took home MVP honors.

In the summer of 2011, Hezonja led the Croatian Under-16 Team to a FIBA Championship, winning an MVP trophy of his own in the process. Unfortunately, a broken arm and a bout with mononucleosis forced Hezonja to miss the entirety of the 2011-12 season with Zagreb.

When the year ended, Saric signed with crosstown rival KK Cibona, where he was promised more minutes and a bigger role within the Adriatic League club’s offense. Hezonja decided to take adifferent path.

In 2012, a 17-year-old Hezonja signed with FC Barcelona, one of the top non-NBA teams in the world. He spent nearly all of his first season in Spain playing for the ACB club’s reserve team. An exceptionally bouncy athlete with a deadeye stroke from beyond the arc, he led the team in scoring, averaging 14.5 points per game and finishing second in rebounds (3.4 RPG) and third in assists (1.4 APG).

The next season, Hezonja earned a spot with Barcelona’s “A” team, but he primarily got on the floor in garbage time and often played no minutes at all. After appearing in 18 of the team’s first 21 games in 2013-14, Hezonja’s saw his role with the veteran club quickly evaporate as they geared up for a postseason run. Between December 23 and March 7, he saw action in just five of the team’s 23 games, but a string of injuries forced head coach Xavi Pascual to give Hezonja his first career start with the team.

In 21 minutes of action as a starter against CB Valladolid on March 8, Hezonja scored nine points on 3-of-6 shooting to go along with a game-high six assists and three rebounds. In a game against Bàsquet Manresa one week later, he broke out for a game-high 26 points on 9-of-12 from the field and 4-of-6 from beyond the arc.

Hezonja’s natural talent and poise was obvious in the four games he started – he averaged 21.5 points, 8.3 rebounds, and 5.3 assists per 36 minutes during the stretch. But playing in a league, and for a coaching staff, that placed great value upon experience and continuity, he returned to the bench immediately when his team got over the injury bug.

It would have been easy for a player like Hezonja to begin to question himself. Here he was, a prospect who had dreamt of playing in the NBA since those sweltering summer days in his hometown, now riding pine in Spain while his former teammate, Dario Saric, was coming off back-to-back league MVP and FIBA Young Player of the Year awards back home. But his story is not uncommon for young players competing in the ultra-competitive Spanish league.

Barcelona center and fellow Dubrovnik native Ante Tomic took Hezonja under his wing early and helped him navigate his transition to the bench. Tomic, selected by the Utah Jazz in the second round of the 2008 NBA Draft, played for KK Zagreb for six seasons before joining Real Madrid in 2009. His minutes were cut immediately upon arrival in Spain, and he went from being a top player in Croatia to being a fringe starter in the ACB.

Over time, Tomic has carved out a nice career for himself in Spain, moving on from Madrid to Barcelona in 2012 with the promise of a more prominent role. It’s possible the 28-year-old will never leave Europe, but for Mario Hezonja that’s not an option. He’s committed to realizing his NBA dream, but unlike his counterparts in America, who are often the featured stars of their teams at every level of competition until being drafted, Hezonja has had to show scouts what he can do in the limited opportunities he’s received.

So far in 2014-15, he’s played nearly three times as many minutes as he did the season prior. Still, he’s averaged just 15.1 minutes per game in 65 appearances. But he was able to make the most of the time he was given, averaging 14.2 points (46.3 FG%, 38.8 3P%), 4.8 rebounds, and 2.7 assists per 36 minutes and at times leaving his opponents, and even his teammates, in awe of the things he’s been able to do on the court.

In a game against Bàsquet Manresa on February 1, he came off the bench to go 8-for-8 from three-point range en route to 24 points and six assists in just 23 minutes. And just a few days ago, at 20 years old, he became the youngest player ever to score 18 points in the ACB Finals, doing so in just 25 minutes. And in limited opportunities in between he did stuff like this:





Hezonja is ready to break out. He has a skill level that most American prospects would kill for, and if there are any questions about his confidence it’s that he has too much of it. In the NBA, he’ll be tested in a way that he hasn’t been to this point in his basketball career, and if he can handle those pressures, he has the potential to make good on his prediction of ending up the best player in this year’s class.