Johnny Hamilton – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Johnny Hamilton
C – 7’0, 230lbs – Born 3rd February 1994
Grand Rapids Drive
Hamilton joined the Drive after summer league and training camp stints with the parent Detroit Pistons, who recognised the potential in the late-blooming big man. With a very solid first professional season behind him, their opinion looks vindicated.
The former Virginia Tech Hokie transferred to Texas-Arlington for his senior season, whereupon he put in big numbers to establish his professional credentials. A very smooth athlete for …
Shep Garner – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Shep Garner
PG/SG – 6’2, 196lbs – Born 6th December 1996
Grand Rapids Drive
Garner made the Drive’s roster via the local tryout route, and survived for the entire season. He joined them in his first professional campaign after a senior year in which he was almost completely divested of any on-the-ball, inside-the-arc responsibilities, and was instead empowered to gun up the shots. And that, he did.
As a senior, Garner shot 7.1 three-point attempts per game, compared to only …
Michael Bethea Jr – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Michael Bethea Jr
SG/SF – 6’6, 185lbs – Born 22nd January 1995
Grand Rapids Drive
Bethea’s circuitous route to the pros included a year at Grambling State, who had gone winless over Division 1 competition in two of the three previous seasons. On a team needing any help it can get, Bethea – a junior by this time – scored only 5.3 points per game on 29.9% from the field and 25.6% from three-point range. He then moved again, this …
Adam Woodbury – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Adam Woodbury
C – 7’1, 245lbs – Born 13th January 1994
Grand Rapids Drive
Three years into his professional career out of Iowa, Woodbury has spent his entire time in the G-League, and has now been with six different franchises. Indeed, he managed four this season alone. Woodbury initially returned to the Westchester Knicks, was traded before camp started along with Buay Tuach to the Capital City Go-Go for third- and fourth-round picks in this year’s draft, was waived the …
Todd Withers – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Todd Withers
PF – 6’8, 216lbs – Born 6th May 1996
Grand Rapids Drive
I have no idea how Synergy Sports manage to go as deep as they do. But somehow, they were able to cover and analyse every game of Division II’s South Atlantic Conference in 2017-18. And with that, they were able to determine that Withers was a 92nd percentile spot-up shooter that season. That combined with his athletic 6’8 frame made for an intriguing combination, and Withers …
Marcus Thornton – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Marcus Thornton
SG – 6’4, 205lbs – Born 5th June 1987
Grand Rapids Drive
There are three Marcus Thorntons in high level professional basketball today. There is the one out of LSU who played many years in the NBA. There is the one drafted by the Celtics in the second-round out of William and Mary who has a lot of hair and scores a lot of points. And then there is the power forward from Georgia. This is the first …
Speedy Smith – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Kenneth “Speedy” Smith
PG – 6’3, 180lbs – Born 28th January 1993
Grand Rapids Drive
With the exception of the very first few months of his professional career, in which he made an unsuccessful attempt to sign in Latvia, Smith has played the entirety of his professional career in the G-League, including the last two full seasons with Grand Rapids. He has been a sometime-starter, sometime-reserve for the team, a flexible and useful full-court point guard who has improved his …
Randy Haynes – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Randy Haynes
SG – 6’4, 215lbs – Born 23rd April 1995
Grand Rapids Drive
Despite having the name of a truck-driving minor character in an 80’s coming-of age movie, Haynes is also in fact a 2018 Old Dominion graduate who averaged 12.4 points, 3.6 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.3 steals per game as a senior, something he was able to parlay into a five-game stint with the Drive to begin the season after making the roster via the local tryout …
Elijah Brown – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Elijah Brown
SG – 6’4, 200lbs – Born 19th February 1995
Grand Rapids Drive
In his first professional season out of Oregon (via Butler and New Mexico), Brown began with a summer league spot on the Golden State Warriors, followed by being drafted in the third round of the G-League Draft by the Drive, appearing in 11 games and averaging 4.9 points per contest, before being waived in December. He subsequently signed in Lithuania with Dzukija, averaging 14.0 points in …
Joe Kilgore – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Joe Kilgore
SG – 6’4, 200lbs – Born 25th April 1996
Grand Rapids Drive
Kilgore was the Windy City Bulls’ first-round pick in the past G-League draft, selected 12th overall in his first professional season out of Texas A&M Corpus Christi. He played in 18 games for the Bulls before being waived in mid-December, then was picked up by the Grand Rapids Drive, where he played nine more. Waived again in late January, the Bulls picked Kilgore back up again …
Dakarai Allen – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Dakarai Allen
SG – 6’5, 193lbs – Born 4th February 1995
Grand Rapids Drive
Grand Rapids have been Allen’s third G-League team in his two G-League seasons, as they traded the returning player rights to Nnanna Egwu to Agua Caliente for him back in January. In those two years, he has continued the incremental development he showed over his four years at San Diego State, while also operating within much the same limitations.
One of the best athletes on this …
Tommy Williams – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Tommy Williams
SG/SF – 6’5, 220lbs – Born 23rd February 1993
Erie BayHawks
Williams was designated as a returning player to the BayHawks for his second season after spending a full campaign with the team in 2017-18, making the roster initially via the local tryout route. This season, however, he was cut after only ten games, averaging 2.7 points, 3.0 rebounds and 1.4 fouls per game in that time. Williams’s résumé prior to his successful tryout was two years at …
Craig Sword – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Craig Sword
SG – 6’3, 196lbs – Born 16th January 1994
Erie BayHawks
Anytime a 6’3 guard records more than a block per game, you are going to remember it.
Sword has now completed his second consecutive season with the BayHawks, starting out as a local tryout player initially but now becoming a very important part of their rotation and their defence. Swords’s stocks totals were part of his game over his four-year Mississippi State career, yet they were drowned …
Jordan Sibert – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Jordan Sibert
SG – 6’4, 187lbs – Born 1st August 1992
Erie BayHawks
After two years down on the Ohio State Buckeyes bench, making minimal contributions in very limited minutes, Sibert transferred to Dayton for his upperclassman seasons, and massively improved his output to subsequently have a four-years-and-counting professional career. Indeed, he actually received a 10-day call-up from the BayHawks’ parent club, the Atlanta Hawks, in February of this year. They even played in for four minutes. It has been …
Anthony Mosby – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Anthony Mosby
PG – 6’3, 160lbs – Born 8th April 1996
Erie BayHawks
AJ Mosby – or Anthony Mosby, depending on where you look – has just completed his first professional season out of Alcorn State. Not a powerhouse team in a powerhouse conference, exactly, and the 13-23 record that the Braves (I had to look up their nickname) posted in his two seasons with them in SWAC play meant no postseason platform for Mosby to perform on. The G-League …
Jaylen Morris – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Jaylen Morris
SG – 6’5, 185lbs – Born 19th September 1995
Erie BayHawks
Morris played his way into the NBA last season in his first professional campaign out of Division II Molloy, signing two 10-day contracts and then a minimum salary deal for the remainder of the season with the Atlanta Hawks. Although they ended it at the start of last offseason, he quickly received a two-way with the Milwaukee Bucks; after that was ended in January, Morris was picked …
Sanjay Lumpkin – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Sanjay Lumpkin
SG/SF – 6’6, 220lbs – Born 29th April 1994
Erie BayHawks
Few players are quite as unique as Sanjay Lumpkin. I mean, even the name is a clue there, no one else is called this.
Lumpkin barely scores the ball, and barely looks to try. His usage instead comes on the defensive end, a task he takes to with relish. The fact that he stands slightly undersized for the two guard position seems not to be in anyway …
Jeremy Hollowell – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Jeremy Hollowell
SF/PF – 6’8, 220lbs – Born 25th February 1994
Erie BayHawks
In two years at Indiana, Hollowell struggled. He was inefficient from all areas, turned the ball over a lot, was not aggressive, stopped the ball, did not buy in on defence and was at one point suspended for his lack of focus.
In two years at Georgia State, Hollowell started to find himself. He began to play with a better rhythm in his favourite areas of the …
Kameron Chatman – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Kameron Chatman
SF/PF – 6’9, 215lbs – Born 1st June 1996
Erie BayHawks
Chatman played his first two collegiate seasons at Michigan, yet never found his footing on either end of the floor. He in fact lost minutes as a sophomore rather than stepped up to claim a regular rotation spot, and was effectively deemed unplayable by season’s end. Chatman inevitably transferred out of the program and went to Detroit Mercy, where in the only season he played for the …
Cat Barber – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Cat Barber
PG – 6’1, 173lbs – Born 25th July 1994
Erie BayHawks
With the exception of very brief stints in Italy and Israel, Cat Barber has spent his entire professional career thus far on the very fringes of the NBA. He has had a training camp contract with Philadelphia, summer league stints with New Orleans and Dallas, and has spent the rest of his time in the G-League. Dog Groomer initially returned to the Greensboro Swarm to begin this …
Isaac Hamilton – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Isaac Hamilton
SG – 6’4, 185lbs – Born 14th May 1994
Canton Charge
Hamilton could be a good role player if he fully embraced a role. Slightly undersized for a high-level two-guard yet smooth and fluid in his motion, with enough speed to be competitive, Hamilton has good passing vision for a wing player, which, when combined with off-ball movement and his love of running the wings in transition, could make him a very solid role player to any point …
Chance Comanche – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Chance Comanche
PF/C – 6’10, 210lbs – Born 14th April 1996
Canton Charge
Fair play to anyone in any professional who has a marketable skill and who seeks to get paid for it. So you should (says Mark in his free Manifesto). Having not done much in his first two seasons at Arizona, the traditional argument would have been that Chance Comanche should have stayed in school, built up his body, his skills and his CV. But that argument only …
J.J. Avila – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
J.J. Avila
PF – 6’8, 250lbs – Born 11th October 1991
Agua Caliente Clippers
Notwithstanding the sample size, if Avila can continue to shoot the three-point shot as well as he has done this season, he adds a further dimension to his paint-based interior game, a game that already makes him a threat at this and any comparable professional level.
With a big, wide, strong frame, Avila’s origins are to be found in the paint, where he has skill to …
Nigel Johnson – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Nigel Johnson
PG – 6’1, 190lbs – Born 20th January 1995
Canton Charge
In four years at three prominent schools – Rutgers counts as prominent, despite the profound struggles of, ooh, the last forty years or so – Johnson never once cracked the 40% shooting mark from the field. Only once did he surpass the .482% true shooting percentage he shot as a freshman; it was in the .521% he shot the following year as a sophomore. Considering he is …
Malik Newman – 2018-19 G-League Player Profile
June 20th, 2019
Malik Newman
SG – 6’3, 190lbs – Born 21st February 1997
Canton Charge
Newman’s first professional season was a strange one. Leaving Kansas after his sophomore season, he went undrafted, went to summer league with the L.A. Lakers, signed a two-way contract with them on the first possible day to do it, yet never even made it out the month of July before they ended it. Subsequently picked up by the Miami Heat for training camp, he did not make …
