Sean Sonderleiter

Sean Sonderleiter

Sonderleiter is a D-League veteran with a resumé to match. He played three and a bit seasons at Iowa, with career best averages of 8.4 rebounds and 4.0 rebounds, before quitting the team halfway through his senior season. In a short space of time, Sonderleiter's sister died, he dislocated his shoulder and he was busted for marijuana possession; he left the program in January 2004 and did not return.

Sonderleiter then didn't play again for three and half years, until the summer of 2007, when he appeared in an Australian minor league called the State Basketball League. The SBL is a semi-professional league; nevertheless, Sonderleiter spent a couple of summers down there, averaging 23/10 in 2007 and 24/13 in 2008. A couple of months later, Sonderleiter was drafted 155th (not a typo) in the D-League draft by the Fort Wayne Mad Ants in the D-League, where he spent much of the 2008-09 season, averaging 4.0 points and 3.1 rebounds. This year, he improved those numbers to an average 11.0 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. And this has got him into the NBA fold, if only at summer league level.

How did he get from there to here? How did a 29 year old unathletic 6'9 face-up power forward without a three point shot go from three and a half years out of the sport to the NBA summer leagues, via a Western Australian semi-professional league and two years on a D-League bench? I don't know. But I do know that he has a haircut like an anime character.