Portugal's Historic Win Over Spain: Queta's Impact

Spain arrived as the heavyweight. Portugal walked in as the footnote.

By the final buzzer, the script was in shreds.

Backed by a roster stacked with NBA pedigree and headlined by rising prospect Hugo Gonzalez and former Celtic Juancho Hernangomez, Spain entered this World Cup qualifier as 12.5-point favorites and the long-established power. They are, year after year, the standard in Europe, the program that usually stands just behind Team USA in global pecking order.

Portugal had one NBA player. But that one player changed everything.

Neemias Queta, Boston’s 7-foot center and the lone NBA representative on the Portuguese side, anchored a 95-89 shocker that delivered Portugal’s first-ever tournament win over Spain and kept alive a dream that once felt purely theoretical: a first World Cup berth.

This was not a fluke fourth-quarter run or a lucky shooting night. Portugal moved to 4-3 in qualifying with this result and did it by standing toe-to-toe with a giant that has dominated the continent for two decades.

And in the middle of it, Queta grew.

Queta at the heart of history

His box score line won’t overwhelm at first glance: 16 points on 5-for-10 shooting, nine rebounds. But the timing told the real story. Queta’s second half tilted the game, his presence around the rim and on the glass giving Portugal a backbone against a deeper, more decorated Spanish front line.

On a night when Spain rolled out six players with NBA ties, Portugal’s single representative refused to blink. Every defensive stand, every contested rebound, every hard roll to the basket carried weight well beyond one qualifier.

For Portugal, this is uncharted territory. The national team has long lived on the margins of European basketball, making EuroBasket only four times in its history and not appearing between 2011 and last year. The current group has dragged the program into a new era, and Queta has become one of its faces.

“It’s a growing thing,” he told Eurohoops. “We’re getting so much better as a country in the sport. So, I feel like it’s only fitting that I keep on getting better, too. So, I just want to be out here competing my best and live with the results.”

That growth is no longer theoretical. Beating Spain in a competitive tournament game is the kind of result that echoes. Inside the locker room. Across the federation. Back in Boston.

From fringe big to $56 million man

The timing of Queta’s rise with Portugal dovetails neatly with the turning point in his NBA career.

This summer, the Celtics committed to him in a way no team had before, handing him a four-year, $56 million contract extension that begins after this season. It’s his first major NBA deal, and it arrives on the back of a breakout year that changed his trajectory.

In 2023-24, Queta finally played like a rotation staple instead of a roster question mark. He averaged 10.2 points and 8.4 rebounds across 76 games, starting 75 of them. For a player who had appeared in only 48 games over his first three seasons — split between Sacramento and Boston — it was a leap.

But in Boston, leaps are only the beginning. The standard is measured in playoff series, not regular-season stat lines.

Last spring’s collapse against the Sixers, when the Celtics blew a 3-1 series lead, sharpened that reality. Joel Embiid controlled the paint, and Queta struggled to stay on the floor, hampered by foul trouble and a lack of consistent rim impact. Team president Brad Stevens did not sugarcoat it.

“To be honest, one of the things with Neemi was just figuring out how to keep him on the floor,” Stevens said. “Because he had two games where he’s off the floor in four minutes.”

Those are the possessions, the matchups, that will define whether Queta is more than a solid regular-season starter. They will also define whether that $56 million looks like a bargain or a gamble.

A crowded paint in Boston

Stevens’ response to the Sixers series did not stop at pointed words. It showed up on the transaction sheet.

Boston went out and signed former Knicks center Mitchell Robinson, one of the league’s most disruptive rebounders and interior defenders when healthy. When Stevens talked about needing more impact at the rim and being willing to look elsewhere to get it, this was the move that drove the point home.

For Queta, the message is clear. His starting spot is no longer a given.

Robinson brings a different profile: elite shot-blocking instincts, offensive rebounding, and a reputation as a paint deterrent. He also brings a long injury history. That reality keeps the door wide open for Queta, who will have every chance to earn minutes — and keep them — regardless of who hears their name in the starting lineup on opening night.

The competition should sharpen both. For Boston, that’s the ideal outcome. For Queta, it’s another test in a year full of them.

Portugal now, Celtics next

Before he steps back into the Celtics’ rotation battle, Queta has another high-stakes assignment: keeping Portugal’s World Cup dream alive.

Next up is Georgia, also sitting at 4-3, in what amounts to a must-win game on Monday. The margins are thin. One off night, one flat quarter, and this breakthrough campaign can stall.

But Portugal now has proof that it can stand up to the continent’s elite. It has a center who is learning, in real time, how to carry expectations for both club and country.

Spain felt the weight of that progress. Georgia will try to stop it.

And when Queta returns to Boston, the question will hang over both his national team and his NBA future: is this the start of something permanent, or just the first flash of what he might become?