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ago 28 2026Real Madrid has secured the center it had been searching for all summer. Damian Jones has signed with the white club through the end of the 2026-2027 season, as announced by the club and reported by the ACB. The deal had leaked a week ago but was delayed until now because the player was competing in—and winning—the Puerto Rico league finals with the Vaqueros de Bayamón.
Who is Damian Jones
Selected with the 30th pick in the 2016 Draft after developing at Vanderbilt, Jones is a two-time NBA champion with the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and 2018, two rings earned during the franchise's golden era. His subsequent career followed the path of an itinerant professional: 293 games in the NBA spread across the Warriors, Atlanta Hawks, Sacramento Kings, Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles Lakers, Utah Jazz, and Cleveland Cavaliers.
At 31 years old and standing 2.11 meters tall, the American is embarking on his first contract in European basketball. That's the nuance worth keeping in mind: Madrid is not signing a player with proven EuroLeague experience, but rather an interior with a physical profile—verticality in pick-and-roll, rebounding, and defensive presence—who will have to adapt to a style of play, schedule, and officiating he has never encountered. The Puerto Rico league, where he just won the championship, is a very different scenario from what awaits him.
An Overstocked Frontcourt, and for Good Reason
With Jones, head coach Pedro Martínez now has seven interior options: Jones himself, Edy Tavares, Olivier Sarr, Eli John Ndiaye, Jaime Pradilla, Mikael Jantunen, and Chuma Okeke. Eight, if you count Gaby Deck, who has been accustomed to playing power forward in recent years.
The accumulation is not a market whim. Last season ended with the team's three centers falling injured almost simultaneously, leaving Tavares as the only real guarantee for entire stretches of the season, and Usman Garuba will not return until the end of this season due to his Achilles tendon injury. Following the departures of Alex Len, Ömer Yurtseven, and Mady Sissoko, the front office decided it would not come up short again. Jones is the final piece of that safety net, and his natural role will be to give rest to a Tavares who played beyond reasonable limits last year.
The announcement comes, moreover, on an eventful day for the white team's locker room: Deck withdrew early this morning from the Argentina-Puerto Rico game with a shoulder issue, still without an official diagnosis.
