Shavon Shields played two championship finals in Italy and in 2018 he would have been the MVP of the series if his team had won it. Fortunately, Olimpia won the title and Andrew Goudelock was the deserving MVP, but this does not change that Shields had a memorable season and even better finals (he scored 31 points in game 5, 17 of the last Trento’s 18 points, including the three that almost won the game for his team). Now, Shavon is a Milan player, but between that series and his coming, there have also been two important seasons in Vitoria that included his EuroLeague debut and even more relevant the championship run made by his team in the “Valencia Bubble”. But his story is much deeper than that and is worth telling.
Shavon grew up in Olathe, Kansas, and is the son of Will Shields, a 12-time Pro-Bowl selection, which is a sort of NFL All-Star Game. He has spent his entire career with the Kansas City Chiefs, won the award as the best lineman in college football (at Nebraska), twice won the Big Eight title and he is a Hall-of-Famer since 2015. When Will Shields was introduced to the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, Shavon was sitting in the first row, listening to what his dad had to tell. Proud. Not only of what he had done on the football field, but also outside of it. Will Shields is the founder of the “Will to Succeed Foundation”, which try to assist financially young kids who cannot afford to study. Shavon often worked on his father foundation in the summer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj0WzaeMktA
But the right genes did not come only from an athletic point of view, even from an academic one. Shavon attended the same university as his father, Nebraska (“It was his decision, I was interested in him going to a good school, of course I was happy when he decided to attend my alma mater,” Will Shields said at “Big Ten Network”), he graduated in biology with very high grades that allowed him to be an Academic All-America twice, an award reserved for the best athletes who are also prominent students. Shields has dual citizenship, he’s American and Danish: his mother Senia moved to the United States to study and attended the same university where he met Will. “Every summer we went to Europe with the whole family, not just in Denmark. It was good for me, because culturally when I started playing in Europe, the adjustment was not hard at all,” he says. Despite his father’s career, Shavon has always preferred basketball. He tried football, his favorite position was wide receiver, but he wasn’t really a fan and he stopped after two years. “My father was a guard, he played on the offensive line to create spaces. It wasn’t for me,” said Shavon. On the other hand, basketball has always been there. “I didn’t have many offers to play basketball, and Nebraska has always been part of my family’s history,” he says. With the Huskers, he had an amazing career, finishing as the fifth best scorer ever and second for appearances in the starting lineup, 112. As a senior, he had 16.4 points per game and he also averaged 5.1 rebounds.
Still, everything almost ended the night of February 6, 2016, when Nebraska hosted Rutgers. It was Shields’ senior season, the decisive one to fuel his ambition to pursue a professional career. In the second half, with Nebraska ahead 72-55, 7:49 minutes remaining to play, Shavon went for a block, when the opponent, hesitating, sent him up in the air and then waited for his descent to take a foul. Except that, in the air, Shields – unbalanced – turned his back and fell heavily to the ground from a considerable height. “I thought he was going to bounce back on his feet as he always does, only that he didn’t,” was his mother’s comment.
It was a frightening moment, in an arena that suddenly became silent. Shields was taken away on a stretcher, his neck locked. But fortunately, the injury – however frightening – turned out to be less serious than feared. Shields missed an important portion of the season, but on March 1 he returned to the court as a hero against Purdue, on Nebraska’s home floor. It was what in college is called “Senior Night”, which is the last home game for the players at the end of their careers. “I was happy because I could finish my college career on the court and not on the bench watching my teammates,” he explained. Tradition has the seniors going to the court with their parents and for Shields the event was much more relavant. Will Shields himself, the legend of the Cornhuskers, was with him, his brother, sister, and his mom Senia. And again: Tim Miles, his coach, handed him the display case with the number 31 jersey retired forever. “Shavon came here in the shadow of his father’s legend – explained the coach – but it has built a personal story.”
In 2016, Shields came to Europe to play first in Frankfurt (“I played mostly at the 4 and therefore I didn’t have to make many decisions, it was more a matter of execution, it wasn’t hard”), then two years in Trento (he averaged 14.3 points per game in the 2017/18 Italian league season over 41 appearances), “where I elevated my game, played the Eurocup, with great teammates and this allowed me to improve.” In Trento he played two championship finals in two years, “Dominique Sutton’s injury in game 2, he was our most influential player, probably affected the outcome of the first finals; in our second try, game 5 was the decisive one, but two trips to the finals for Trento are important and nobody can take them away,” he said. For the last two years he has been in Vitoria (59 appearances in the EuroLeague, 569 points, 35.1% from three, 85.7% from the line; he also averaged 11.7 points and 4.2 rebounds per game in the Spanish league in the 2019/20 season), where he finished his season winning the Spanish league in Valencia. He is also the star of the Danish national team although he has not always been able to play. The last time he did it was in the summer of 2018 and he scored 26 points with 33 of index rating and he led the team to a big win over Belarus.
