Maria Sharapova has been working out at the IMG Academy in Florida since before she was a teenager. It’s where she really learned the game and became a No. 1 player in the world with a pocket full of Grand Slam titles.
Sasha Vujacic is her man and just needs to get in some off-season workouts until he goes back to the Lakers camp next month to try and fight his way off the bench. Before they trade him in a salary dump in February.
So Sharapova and Vujacic are working out together in Florida. No, not like that. You people are disgusting, shame on you. What would your mother say? Fortunately, FanHouse we can trust with the clean, real version of this story.
“It’s interesting,’' Vujacic told FanHouse over the weekend. “She has helped me. We’ve helped each other, I think. As two pro athletes -- in different sports -- we both understand what the other is doing and going through, and what it takes to do well in what we do. She’s working hard. I’m working hard. It’s good together.’'
It was Sharapova who convinced Vujacic to come to Florida last week to train for the first time at the acclaimed IMG Academy in Bradenton, where she has trained most of her athletic life.
She is preparing for the U.S. Open that begins later this month in New York. And while she was on the tennis court under the steaming midday sun, he was in the gymnasium 50 feet away, sweating through his own shirt, too. They were doing completely different workouts, on different courts, but they were pushing each other.
Vujacic is going to be in an interesting spot this season. The Lakers could use his outside shot, but he is going to have to earn minutes in a crowded backcourt. He is going to have to beat out Shannon Brown for those minutes, and there aren’t a lot of them behind Kobe anyway. (He could play some point, but that’s another can of worms.) Plus in the last year of a $5.5 million deal, his name will come up in countless trade discussions and rumors.
We’ll see if Sharapova can help keep him focused and help him play better. Then again, she’s fallen to 16th in the world right now, so she might have her own things to focus on.