A trio of G League Ignite prospects – Jonathan Kuminga, Jalen Green, and Daishen Nix – headline Jeremy Woo’s SI.com list of players to watch during the 2020/21 NBAGL season, which tipped off this morning. Kuminga and Green are widely considered top-five prospects for the 2021 draft, and Kuminga and Nix got off to hot starts in their professional debut today.
[RELATED: G League Ignite Eager To Start Season Under Veteran Leadership]
Kevin Porter, Aleksej Pokusevski, Jontay Porter, and Malachi Flynn are among the G League players on assignment from NBA teams who will be worth keeping an eye on during the next few weeks, according to Woo.
Woo’s list also features Jeremy Lin, an NBA veteran who decided to play in the NBAGL this season rather than accepting more lucrative offers to spend another year in China, as he tells Shams Charania of Stadium (video link). Lin’s Santa Cruz Warriors are in action against the Ignite in today’s opener.
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- Sam Amick of The Athletic explains why the NBA is holding an All-Star Game this year despite the objections of many of its biggest stars. As Amick details, league officials feel that the modified event can be pulled off safely and believe that fans want to see the game played. Scrapping this year’s All-Star Game may also have required the league to go back to the negotiating table with Turner/TNT to figure out how to make up for the loss of one of the network’s marquee NBA events.
- Veteran guard Donald Sloan, who appeared in 218 regular season NBA games from 2011-16, has been granted his release by the Adelaide 36ers of the Australian Basketball League, the club announced. The 36ers indicated that Sloan asked to be waived to pursue other opportunities internationally.
- The NBA is in talks with the Dropping Dimes Foundation about potentially assisting more than 100 remaining American Basketball Association players, many of whom are struggling financially and are in need of pensions, a league spokesperson tells Dana Hunsinger Benbow of The Indianapolis Star.
Those 100 red, white, and blue three point shot guys were ground breakers. Do the right thing millionaires and billionaires. Little Louis Dampier King of 3-pointers. They laughed at the 3 point rule .. no one laughin’ now.
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