{"id":489435,"date":"2026-03-23T18:56:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T17:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=489435"},"modified":"2026-03-23T18:56:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T17:56:24","slug":"karim-lopez-declares-for-the-2026-nba-draft-its-been-my-dream-my-whole-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/karim-lopez-declares-for-the-2026-nba-draft-its-been-my-dream-my-whole-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Karim Lopez declares for the 2026 NBA Draft: \u201cIt\u2019s been my dream my whole life\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-start=\"1755\" data-end=\"2060\"><strong data-start=\"1755\" data-end=\"1770\">Karim Lopez<\/strong> has officially declared for the <strong data-start=\"1803\" data-end=\"1821\">2026 NBA Draft<\/strong>, telling ESPN that he is ready to chase the league he has dreamed about since childhood. \u201c<strong data-start=\"1912\" data-end=\"1979\">It\u2019s been my dream and my goal my whole life to play in the NBA<\/strong>,\u201d Lopez said as he confirmed his decision.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2062\" data-end=\"2384\">The Mexican forward spent the past two seasons with the <strong data-start=\"2118\" data-end=\"2142\">New Zealand Breakers<\/strong> in Australia\u2019s NBL and averaged <strong data-start=\"2175\" data-end=\"2207\">11.9 points and 6.1 rebounds<\/strong> this season. ESPN continues to rank him among the most intriguing names in the class and one of the top international prospects available.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2386\" data-end=\"2658\">Lopez also made clear that his ambition goes beyond himself: \u201c<strong data-start=\"2448\" data-end=\"2569\">A goal of mine is to hopefully reach young people in Mexico\u2026 and show people that it doesn\u2019t matter where you\u2019re from<\/strong>.\u201d His path now moves into the key pre-draft stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Mexican prospect told ESPN he is entering the 2026 NBA Draft after two seasons with the New Zealand Breakers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":278632,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[399],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-489435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2022\/06\/NBA-logo-illustration.jpg","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489435"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=489435"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=489435"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=489435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}