Coming to UA was 'best decision' for Azuolas Tubelis as he awaits NBA Draft fate

The easy way for Azuolas Tubelis to prepare for the NBA Draft and a professional basketball career wasn’t routed through Arizona.

It wasn’t arriving at the Tucson International Airport on a stifling hot August 2020 night, having committed to the Wildcats sight unseen because of heavy COVID restrictions and then making a long, masked journey from Lithuania.

It wasn’t spending a freshman year adjusting, often uncomfortably, to college basketball and then-coach Sean Miller’s philosophies.

Nor was it spending another two years under another coach, Tommy Lloyd, who proved just as demanding.

No. The 6-foot-10 forward could have just stayed in his native, basketball-mad Lithuania, where he was identified as an elite prospect early in his teenage years, and kept developing with the national team’s program and his local club, the Rytas of Vilnius.

A top-level European pro contract awaited him at some point.

“I realized that I’m good when I was 14-15 years old because I was playing with a group (that was) 2001 born,” Tubelis said. “I had all those stats with one-year-older guys and I got some recognition. I’m like, ‘OK, I’m good.’ Which I didn’t expect.”

In that sense, maybe Tubelis didn’t need three seasons with the Arizona Wildcats. He said he would have had a “lot of options” had he stayed home … but those options would all be somewhere in Europe.

The European options are still there. Tubelis could easily command a six-figure contract should he opt to return to that side of the Atlantic.

But now, as a second-team all-American and fringe NBA Draft prospect, having proven himself in front of NBA scouts over dozens of high-profile games during the past three seasons, Tubelis has a chance to make an NBA team or at least latch onto a G League opening that could allow him to him keep elevating.

You won’t find Tubelis on many of the major mock NBA Drafts, though. ESPN has him rated the 61st-best player available for the 58-player draft, and the Athletic puts him at No. 65. But Yahoo has him going to the Brooklyn Nets at No. 51, Sports Illustrated projects him going with the second-to-last pick while NBADraft.net projects he’ll be the very last player taken.

“Tubelis is a lefty with solid touch around the rim and has a good mid-range game off the block,” Yahoo wrote. “If the Nets take two guards in the first round, they could be targeting size and versatility at the back half of the draft,” with Tubelis.

Those sort of projections suggest Tubelis’ floor, if he does not get drafted Thursday, is to sign a summer league contract with an NBA team and maybe a two-way or Exhibit 10 contract that would give him a chance to attend an NBA preseason camp and potentially keep auditioning himself in the G League. One NBA scout told the Star that Tubelis is at least an Exhibit 10 candidate since he might be worth taking a longer look at to see if he has developmental potential.

A two-way contract shuttles a player back and forth between the G League and NBA for a salary starting at around $500,000, while an Exhibit 10 deal is an unguaranteed NBA deal that can offer a player up to $50,000 to attend an NBA training camp, with a team option to send him to the G League.

All those opportunities might not be as present if Tubelis was buried in the European basketball ecosphere, unable to play often before NBA scouts and unable to experience the speed of the American game.

“In Arizona, I learned a lot of things, my game style changed and I got better,” Tubelis told the Star last month at the NBA Combine in Chicago. “I don’t know if I would be the same player in Europe that I’m here now. It’s scary to think about.”

But back in 2020, it was scary to come to Arizona and figure out what to do next. Miller told him, over and over, and it wasn’t easy at first.

“I came to the States, I didn’t change anything,” Tubelis said. “And then all the coaches start yelling and then I don’t play good in practices. That was my main problem in Arizona for first two years, maybe one and a half. I couldn’t push myself and they just kind of set my mind right — just play hard like what two or three hours on the court.”

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As a sophomore in 2021-22, Tubelis said of that freshman season that he had a lot of bad days in practice after which he “came to my dorm really, sad, angry. I kept saying, ‘I don’t want to play this game. Why am I here?’”

His brother, then-UA reserve guard Tautvilas Tubelis, said the UA practices were “way, way more tough” than anything the brothers had experienced before but reminded Azuolas why he came to America, and to Arizona.

Tautvilas “said a lot of things (to get me) to keep playing. ‘That’s why you are here. You need to use this opportunity,’” Azoulas said.

The player known around McKale Center as ’Zu stuck with it. Seven games into Tubelis’ freshman season, Miller stuck him in the starting lineup, and he never left. Tubelis established himself as a quick, smooth and mobile inside offensive option, becoming the Wildcats’ second-leading scorer (12.2) as a freshman. He was twice named Pac-12 Freshman of the Week and made the league’s all-freshman team.

Then he went back home to Lithuania, and just 50 seconds into his first game in the FIBA U19 World Cup, blocked a shot from UA teammate Bennedict Mathurin of Canada, who became one of the NBA’s top rookies last season.

Zu was gaining confidence.

But before Tubelis’ sophomore year began, Lloyd let him know things would still not be easy.

“Of course, and it’s good that they were hard on me,” Tubelis said last month. He told me before this year, too. He said, `You will be the best player in the team. I am gonna still be hard on you.’ “

Tubelis kept emerging. Adapting his mobile game into Lloyd’s more uptempo offense, Tubelis averaged 14.1 points and shot 54.0% from the field as a sophomore in 2021-22, landing on the all-Pac-12 first team.

As a junior last season, motivated by how TCU and Houston outmuscled him and the Wildcats in the 2022 NCAA Tournament, Tubelis boosted his rebounding average from 6.2 to 9.1 a game. He collected 14 double-doubles, the 10th most in UA basketball history, and became a consensus second-team all-American pick.

But Lloyd still occasionally pulled Tubelis out of key moments for defensive reasons, and the question of what sort of player he can defend in the NBA is one reason he’s not considered a certain draft pick, along with the limited offensive range he showed in college.

“Tubelis’ productivity and skill level should put him firmly in the draft conversation,” ESPN draft analyst Jonathan Givlony wrote, “but he’ll have to continue to make strides with his perimeter shooting, passing and defense to carve out an NBA role.”

A lot of questions, to be sure. But Tubelis said he’s been working on his 3-point shooting during the predraft process, which took him to Los Angeles and on a tour of team workouts around the country.

In between, he stopped over at the NBA Combine for testing, five-on-five scrimmages and interviews with teams and media alike. He used that opportunity to sell his quickness and shooting ability around the rim, comparing himself to a “quicker type of (Domantas) Sabonis” and a lefty in the mold of Knicks 7-footer Isaiah Hartenstein.

“Of course, there’s a lot of room to work” to reach Sabonis’ level, Tubelis said, adding of Hartenstien, “he’s a lefty, he’s strong, he can shoot the ball. He has the soft touch around the rim. Those are both players” to compare with.

Whether or not he gets drafted Thursday, Tubelis will get another chance to keep answering all the questions again this summer and fall.

Maybe he answers them. Maybe not. But at least, after spending the last three years at Arizona directly in front of NBA eyes, he’ll get the chance to do so.

“The best decision was just coming here with my brother,” Tubelis said. “I think it was the best decision I’ve made so far, and it worked out well.”