After three seasons stateside, Ante Zizic has signed a two-year deal to hoop professionally in Israel. Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com reports that Zizic has inked a two-year deal with Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Zizic, still just 23 years old, was one of the pieces that the Cavs landed in the Kyrie Irving trade and he came with a certain level of intrigue. While he didn’t quite blow the socks off fans in Cleveland during his tenure there, he showed legitimate signs of potential in 2018-19 despite never getting a consistent opportunity to produce at the NBA level.
Zizic averaged 7.8 points and 5.4 rebounds per game in just 18.3 minutes of action that year and scored 15 or more points nine times over the course of the campaign. His role was reduced in 2019-20 and with the number of established veteran bigs on the Cavs roster now, it’s likely that trend would have continued in 2020-21.
Zizic’s interest in returning to Europe is no secret, the topic has been floated since early July, but the now formalized deal marks an end of the mysterious Croatian prospect’s NBA career. For now at least.
