By Semih Tuna/ info@eurohoops.net
Riga, Latvia – Debuting in a major international tournament with Portugal, Neemias Queta paired 23 points with 18 rebounds, leading his country to a win, 62-50, over Czechia on Wednesday.
The 26-year-old center of the Boston Celtics made 11/15 field goals, including one three-pointer, lasting 30 minutes. Four blocks and two steals built up a staggering efficiency rating of 39.
After representing his country at the junior level, the Lisbon native debuted at the senior level in the Pre-Qualifiers of the EuroBasket 2025. From there, upon a historic run for the team coached by Mario Gomes to advance through the Qualifiers, he moved directly into the final stage of the tournament.
🇵🇹🔥 Neemias Queta crushed the Czech Republic without mercy in his #Eurobasket debut!
23 points
10/14 2PTS
1/1 3PT
18 rebounds
1 assist
2 steals
4 blocks
39 PIR
in 31 minutes pic.twitter.com/CrCXcqLj7Q— Eurohoops (@Eurohoopsnet) August 27, 2025
Resurfacing in the EuroBasket for the first time since 2011 and picking up the first win since 2007, his brilliant display pushed Portugal to 1-0 in Group A.
“In 2007, I wasn’t sure what basketball was. I hadn’t picked the basketball yet, so I wasn’t watching that team. I wasn’t watching what was going on. Even in 2011, I wasn’t watching. So, it’s a good feeling to have right now, and we’re excited about the opportunity we got in front of us,” said Queta after the game in Arena Riga.
“We’re happy for this win, but we’re not satisfied. We want to keep going and keep stacking the wins,” he added.
“I feel like it was a mixture of everything. I think my teammates found me in the right spots, whether it was to score, whether it was for me to find other guys after that, and then, on the rebounding stage, I feel like I just got a good, good, good teammates that didn’t allow them to get downhill and get rebounds. So when they box out and they do their job on the perimeter, it’s so much easier for us bigs to go get rebounds,” he also praised his teammates, “It was a collective effort and like I said, I’m pretty good at rebounding and I just keep going and get.”
Up next is Serbia, the odds-on favorite to win the tournament, on Friday evening.
“We’re not really particularly worried about any matchup. He’s a great player, the best player in the world in my opinion, and so we just got to be ready to go and like I said, when you’re playing against guys like that, we’ve got to be ready to not really give him anything easy. We got to play like our lives depend on it, and after that we just we just played our game,” Queta previewed the meeting with Nikola Jokic.
Photo Credit: FIBA