Veteran NBA center Festus Ezeli, whose playing career was jeopardized by health issues, is joining the Westchester Knicks for the home stretch of the NBA G League season, according to Marc Stein of The New York Times (Twitter link).
Ezeli, who appeared in 170 regular season games and 55 more playoff contests for the Warriors from 2012-16, hasn’t appeared in a game since the 2016 NBA Finals, as major knee and leg problems threatened to end his career. As Connor Letourneau of The San Francisco Chronicle recently detailed, Ezeli hasn’t given up on making it back to the court — he’ll apparently get a chance to do so in the G League.
“I’ve put so much into this process, but this is my dream,” Ezeli told Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated (Twitter link), confirming that he’s joining Westchester. “Chasing your dreams is worth every inch of the cost.”
Here’s more on the G League:
- The G League is investigating a claim from Santa Cruz Warriors guard Jeremy Lin that he was called “coronavirus” during a game, as Nick Friedell of ESPN writes. In the Facebook post in which he made the allegation, Lin wrote that his generation of Asian Americans “is tired of being told that we don’t experience racism.”
- Former Mississippi guard Breein Tyree, who was in camp with the Heat in December and was playing for the Raptors 905 in the G League bubble, suffered a torn ACL that will prematurely end his season, per Blake Murphy of The Athletic (Twitter link). Although he’s unable to play, Tyree is sticking with Toronto’s G League affiliate for the rest of the NBAGL bubble.
- While it may seem like the NBA G League season just began, it’s already entering the final week of the regular season. The season will wrap up on March 6, with an eight-team, single-elimination tournament to follow from March 8-11. The G League Ignite, at 7-4, are currently tied for the No. 6 seed and will look to clinch a postseason spot this week.
Jeremy Lin has made a serious accusation. He can’t now say he doesn’t want to name the player. He can do it privately with the League. It is up to the League to take appropriate action. Otherwise he has accomplished nothing.
Reminds me of baseball when Mike Fiers told of the Astros trash can banging. This off season he couldn’t get a contract he deserved and had to settle for a contract half his worth. No doubt he is worth $6 million a year instead of $2.5 when many starters that were way worse was getting over 45 million. Lin opens up and his career is done. He would have a bullseye on his back.
Except Jeremy Lin’s NBA career is already over.
Damn. I was hoping the Warriors would resign Ezeli. He would be a perfect fit. Already knows the system. He would give the Dubs an incredible amount of versatility. Maybe we’ll have a chance in the off season.
Like…you think a g league contract is iron clad? They literally have a sponsor for their call up announcements
Did I say that? I just want to see Myers reaching out to him. He already has a good relationship with Kerr.
Ezeli was promising & effective in the 2015 finals, albeit overlooked.
Funny about call-up sponsorships… but probably lucrative.
That’s a five-syllable word being used in on-court trash-talking! Impressive endeavor with easier words available.
“Back in Ohio” we would have coughed with thumb & fist covering while saying covid at the same time, but these days that might backfire and get the harrier pulled out for covid testing.
Calling Lin “novel” would test everyone. (It’s not just any coronavirus, but the novel coronavirus!) Actually, he might be novel anyway, in the ethnic sense.
While I write of Lin, who is both a China-Taiwan-American, and a pick-and-roll expert, I accuse the Rockets of being mostly interested in the former, because of the desire to capitalize financially from there being so many Chinese in Houston. And thus did they screw up, because they then diminished Lin’s offense and made him expendable. If this was an ep of Law & Order, Jerry Orbach would call that motivation…
(Story: The Knicks had PnR specialist Amare Stoudamire to work with Lin in creating Linsanity; Houston only had fouler Omer Asik at center. and after Lin signed, they traded for James Harden to take over anyway. Knicks would not match Houston’s 3/$25 and had earlier signed Ray Felton. Knicks did not want to be locked down to Lin’s style. Lin wasn’t “believed in” possibly league-wide and got a raw deal. (Wiki used here))
I don’t think anyone is happy with the way things turned out.
Any excuse to trash the Rockets, go figure.
Really? 1% of the population of the Houston area are ethnic Chinese. I highly doubt that Houston signed Lin to capitalize on that population.
It would be good business. I dont get your purpose of the 1% figure. I will claim that Houston is more attached to that ethnicity than average, and that it’s a point of pride for them.
The Rox went after Lin but did the opposite of supporting his PnR methods. Why then? There was no talk then of a second-unit offense; not much now.