Weiler-Babb at Red Star: the man who shuts down guards
Nick Weiler-Babb is the newest Red Star player. The German international was already unveiled at ASVEL this summer, but the French club slashed its budget and the deal fell through.
On Sunday, August 9, a graphic appeared on Red Star’s social media profiles: a player holding a EuroLeague ball with both hands, and across the frame a single line:
NICK, WELCOME TO BELGRADE AND OUR RED AND WHITE FAMILY!
The club put out the announcement, and with it closed a story that had already ended once this summer, just in a different city. Nick Weiler-Babb is a Red Star player.
The German international had previously been unveiled as a signing for France’s ASVEL and had a two year contract with the Lyon based club. Then the French side started cutting costs. A planned budget of 59 million euros was trimmed to around 24 million, and the list of players who left ASVEL after that decision includes Sylvain Francisco, Daniel Theis and Armoni Brooks. Weiler-Babb is the last name on that list, and the only one who ended up in Belgrade.
Who is Nick Weiler-Babb
He was born on December 12, 1995, in Topeka, in the US state of Kansas. He is 30, turning 31 in December. Standing 196 centimeters tall, he is listed as a combo guard, which in practice means he can play either point guard or shooting guard and cover several positions on defense without a substitution.
Before Belgrade he passed through three clubs: Ludwigsburg, Bayern Munich and Istanbul’s Anadolu Efes, where he is arriving from now. He is a regular member of the German national team and won bronze with that squad at EuroBasket 2022.
The club’s statement does not sell him as a shooter but as a player who breaks down opposing offenses:
Red Star beat out a large number of clubs competing for the signature of the EuroLeague’s best defender, the former Efes player. The former Ludwigsburg, Bayern Munich and Efes guard was born in Topeka, Kansas, on December 12, 1995, and the added value of this 196 centimeter combo guard is the fact that he can play multiple positions on the team. With the arrival of Weiler-Babb, Red Star has gained an experienced player, a fantastic defender and a major reinforcement in every sense for the 2026/27 season.
The statement does not say exactly how many clubs were in the running, only that there were several, which tracks: a guard with EuroLeague minutes who becomes a free agent in mid August does not stay unsigned until September.
What does Red Star get with this signing?
They get a player that opposing coaches have to account for when building a game plan around a pick and roll. Weiler-Babb is the type of guard who guards the ball, fights through screens and switches onto bigger players when the defense starts to break down, so Red Star will not have to disrupt its whole rotation every time a rival tries to hunt one of its guards in a mismatch.
There is another side to it. Thirty years of age and heavy minutes at Efes add up to mileage, and a EuroLeague schedule with two games a week, plus domestic and regional competition, does not go easy on players who empty the tank on defense every night. How the team handles that workload will show over the first months of the season.
Sixth signing of this transfer window
Weiler-Babb is the sixth player to arrive at Mali Kalemegdan this summer, following Jones, Motley, Baldwin, Kramer and Medarevic. Alongside them, Davidovac and Butler extended their existing contracts.
The numbers speak for themselves:
- six new players in a single transfer window
- two contract extensions for players already at the club
- one signing the club explicitly framed as defensive
That is not a squad tweak anymore, it is a rebuild, and a rebuild with a clear signature: the guard rotation is almost entirely new. When this much changes at once, the first issue is usually not the quality of the players but the time it takes them to gel, and the EuroLeague leaves little room to work that out on the fly.
The question still open is who in the starting five will run the offense and who will guard the opponent’s best perimeter player. This summer, Red Star filled those two jobs separately, and that is exactly what the whole transfer window will be measured against once the first EuroLeague tests of the 2026/27 season begin.
