THURSDAY, 11:01am: The deal is official, the Kings announced.
WEDNESDAY, 1:23pm: The Kings are about to sign Sim Bhullar to a 10-day contract, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link). He’ll be the first NBA player from India, as Stein points out, and he’ll play for a team with the league’s first Indian owner, Vivek Ranadive. The Kings have been hoping that the massive 7’5″ center’s conditioning would improve so that they could see fit to bring him aboard, as Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee recently wrote. Sacramento has a full 15-man roster, but David Wear is on the last day of his 10-day contract.
Bhullar, like Wear, was with Sacramento during the preseason, and they both spent most of the year with Sacramento’s D-League affiliate. Bhullar has averaged 10.1 points and 8.6 rebounds in 25.5 minutes per game. He’s seen only 6.0 field goal attempts per game in the D-League team’s go-go offense, which helps explain a scoring output that’s below what most NBA-level prospects put up against D-League competition.
Scoring wasn’t his strong point in college, as the 22-year-old went undrafted out of New Mexico State last year, but he used his size to his advantage, recording 3.4 blocks per game for the Aggies last season. He’s swatted even more shots during his time in the D-League, averaging 3.8 BPG.