Exclusive D-League Affiliate Coming?

[Bonus Jonas]

Have it in Windsor!! We have a brand new arena built like 5 years ago which is nice and we have an NBL team (Windsor Express) that won the title last year, so we have that winning culture

And we're the closest you're gonna get to the states

[mcHAPPY]

Detroit's first year with exclusive DLeague team speaks to what hopefully MLSE/Raptors will experience next year:

Gauging success comes in largely in two pieces: the Pistons control the roster and dictate coaching philosophies and direction, while the Drive handle the marketing and promotion of the team under the direction of the SSJ Group, led by Jbara representing more than 36 investors.

On the court, the goal of the Drive and the league is to develop players for the NBA. In that regard, the Drive, with former Orlando Magic General Manager Otis Smith as coach, graduated two players. They lost top draft pick Robert Covington to Philadelphia before he ever played a game in Grand Rapids, and guard Lorenzo Brown signed with the Minnesota Timberwolves in January and has stuck.

Others, such as No. 1 league prospect Willie Reed, didn't reach their goal. The center was eventually traded to Iowa - which coincided with the Drive's win-loss downfall - and replacement Daniel Orton, a former Kentucky standout, lasted six games before he was waived.

The other purpose of the relationship is to give the Pistons a chance to develop their players. This season, Tony Mitchell, Spencer Dinwiddie, Gigi Datome and Quincy Miller played at various times in Grand Rapids.

"Every year will be different," said Pistons General Manager Jeff Bowers. "The makeup of your Pistons roster will dictate how much crossover we'll have. The younger the team, the more the need for minutes with the Drive. Having gone through it the first year now, we have a baseline sense of it and it is only going help us with our planning in the future."

Bowers was pleased with the way the Drive's on-court operation mirrored that of Stan Van Gundy's with the Pistons.

"I thought that was a strength going into the year, and it's a strength as we wrap up," he said. "Our comfort level with knowing what, for example, Quincy Miller would find when he got here (Grand Rapids) was very high.

http://www.mlive.com/drive/2015/04/p...pleased_w.html

"

Get it done, Masai.

[DanH]

Great news, though I'd rather have a D-League affiliate elsewhere next year than wait a couple years to get one in Canada, if there is any kind of added difficulty.

[white men can't jump]

Not very often I agree with Doug Smith. Granted this is the first thing I've read from him in a loooong time - lol.


I'm surprised by the desire to get DLeague team in to GTA.

I thought for sure the border crossings would be an issue. But I guess the AHL manages, why not DLeague/Raps?


Would Hamilton be a good place? Copps Coliseum seems like a good venue and ideally situated in Southern Ontario.

Meh. Don't think it's a big deal if it's not in Ontario as long as it's still in the area. Smith said he knows Masai "would like" to have it in Ontario. Might not be that easy. I do like that it suggests that they're pretty set on having it close by, and will not put their team in Montana or some nonsense halfway across the continent.

[MACK11]

Meh. Don't think it's a big deal if it's not in Ontario as long as it's still in the area. Smith said he knows Masai "would like" to have it in Ontario. Might not be that easy. I do like that it suggests that they're pretty set on having it close by, and will not put their team in Montana or some nonsense halfway across the continent.

Put it in Buffalo, it's not that far from Toronto

[Puffer]

I meant ideally situated for the rest of the DLeague.

Would avoid major traffic getting in to and out of Toronto. Easily access Michigan and NY State as well.

Yeah, I got that...but my suggestion was all about me.

[mcHAPPY]

Yeah, I got that...but my suggestion was all about me.

Ahhhhhhhhhh..... my apologies.

[white men can't jump]

Put it in Buffalo, it's not that far from Toronto

I actually don't like that idea.

Buffalo's close, but I can't think of many other positives....They'd be competing in a town with major league sports (Sabres, Bills). There's no proper arena for a minor league bball team. Their current PBL team sucks balls, so it's hard to imagine they have generated a lot of fan interest, and coming back to the arena thing, they play in a freakin school.

The only good thing about it, again, is it's proximity. I think otherwise Rochester kicks its ass and is just a bit farther.

And beyond those two, not sure where could make sense, at least not without starting to drift out farther....It's too bad Erie is affiliated (to Orlando somehow).

[Bendit]

Here is another article which speaks to the positive of an org. having their own D team. If the contents are valid at all this could well be a boon but I personally have my doubts without seeing the improvements the coach speaks of:

He was an experiment within an experiment and that should have been trouble for Sim Bhullar. At 7ft 5in, 360lbs the man who would become the NBA’s first player of Indian descent towered over his teammates on the Development League’s Reno Bighorns; a colossus with soft hands, sluggish moves and little stamina.

He would have been a project on any minor league team, but he seemed an especially ridiculous fit at Reno where the Bighorns parent club the Sacramento Kings, were trying to see if a full-court, fast-paced, frenetic system would work in the NBA. It looked like disaster. How could the raw, humungous, out-of-shape Bhullar possibly fit on a team built on running almost nothing but fast breaks?

But somehow the experiment worked well enough that Sacramento signed Bhullar to a 10-day contract on Thursday, making history and leaving Reno coach David Arseneault Jr chuckling into his phone on a team bus ride to Santa Cruz.

“I’m impressed with what he’s been able to do,” Arseneault told the Guardian.

How did Bhullar become an asset on pro basketball’s fastest team? He worked to find a way.

When Areseneault first met Bhullar at the start of practice he didn’t know what to make of the center who seemed miscast in a locker room of fast, slender players who were happiest sprinting across the court. In explaining his offense to Bhullar, Arseneault said: “I try to get guys to play as hard as they can for as long as they can which is usually about two minutes.”

Bhullar looked at Arseneault for a moment and said:

“That sounds just about right for me.”

The constant roster changes and bus trips that are a staple of D-League life kept Arseneault from running as rapid a system as he hoped and Bhullar was forced to play segments that were much longer than two minutes. Yet the longer Bhullar stayed in the games, the better he got. The stomach that protruded from beneath his jersey began to shrink. He ate healthy food. He looked quicker. He had more energy. And he became that looming, intimidating presence all coaches hope to have from a player so huge.

When Reno played a full-court press, Arseneault stationed Bhullar at the end of the court, in front of the basket. Whenever the other team broke through the pressure defense and sprinted up court on a two-on-one break Bhullar stood as the final impediment. Often this is a horrible place to be – one player alone trying to stop two racing full speed. But several players on open breaks froze when they saw Bhullar looming before them. They stopped or they tried to take awkward, lobbing shots over his enormous arms or they passed the ball away killing the break.

“He changed the game just with his presence, really,” Arseneault said. “He can block shots and alter shots and force players to take floaters and more contested (two-point) shots – which is what we want them to do.”

And as the season went on and Sacramento’s experiment with fast-paced basketball constantly changed, the team’s other experiment with Bhullar grew more and more successful.

To Arseneault it seemed Bhullar improved the more he worked himself into great shape. In addition to eating better, Bhullar diligently followed a training program the Kings had devised for him. He showed up regularly for workouts with the strength and speed coaches assigned to Reno’s players. He lifted weights. He ran. He got faster.

In the beginning, Bhullar didn’t know how to move his feet. He constantly found himself a step or two behind the smaller, more agile players. But he practiced finding the right places to stand. He learned to move in ways that didn’t leave him lumbering. He grew quick enough to no longer be a burden. His last game he played 38 minutes. This is when the Kings became serious about calling him up.

He still remains a work in progress. As big and as intimidating as he can be averaging 3.9 blocked shots a game – third best in the D-League – he is not fierce. “A gentle giant,” Arseneault called him. And the coach worried this was the thing that held his center back a bit.

“I wish he’d exert his strength a little more,” Arseneault said.

The coach’s favorite memory of Bhullar came at a practice during a drill that requires players to go one-on-one against each other until the defensive player stops the one on offense. Bhullar, who was using the drill to work on soft hook shots, was losing to a teammate who kept taunting Bhullar as he got the best of him. Suddenly something seemed to snap in the Bighorns center. He picked up the ball, raced as hard as he could to the basket and dunked the ball so hard it knocked the other player down.

Then he did it again. And again. And again. And again.

“I was grinning from ear-to-ear with each successive time he was backing the other guy in and dunking the ball,” Arseneault said. “What set him off in particular is that one guy who was talking too much. He literally woke the sleeping giant.”

Can the gentle giant play in the NBA? Arseneault hopes so. Few professional players – especially in the D-League – were as unselfish as Bhullar who seemed surprisingly unconcerned with scoring baskets. Many times during games, Arseneault would call to Bhullar promising to get him the ball down by the basket where he could easily score only to have the center shrug and say: “I don’t need the ball.”

Now a lot is going to be about him. Arseneault has tried to talk with Bhullar – who was born in Canada to Indian immigrants – about his impending legacy as the first player of Indian descent in the NBA. He was surprised how little Bhullar seemed to concerned about it. The player who could someday have the impact that Yao Ming did in China appeared more willing to see how he fit with the Reno Bighorns than he did breaking a barrier.

That will change. Already, there is great theatre around his promotion to the Kings whose owner Vivek Ranadive is from India. The team heralded his arrival by filling the front page of their website with Bhullar photo galleries, Bhullar timelines, Bhullar stories and even a video of Bhullar workout. Friday’s game against New Orleans suddenly has a bigger meaning than the regularly scheduled Comic Con Night. His arrival is a marketing godsend for a fifth-place team going nowhere this year.

And yet none of it would have happened if one experiment hadn’t worked within another, if a mammoth of a man hadn’t found a way to work in a system made for much smaller players.

Can Sim Bhullar play in the NBA?

He’s already won one battle he seemed destined to lose.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blo...d-to-defy-odds

[Primer]

Highly doubt we create a new D-League team out of nothing, e.g. we're probably going to take over a PBL team like the Razorsharks and move them to the D-League. It's just sooo much easier that way, and it's also how just about every other NBA team has been doing it (hybrid model where NBA team manages basketball operations and franchise remains under local ownership). Razorsharks are dominating the PBL and have a good fan base, they just need us to foot the $6M bill for joining the D-League. They are close to Canada but still in the US so that D-League guys aren't screwed by taxes every time they play in Canada. I just see too many hurdles to get a team in Canada, without any benefits. It'd take years to get a Canadian D-League team, but we could have the Razorsharks in the D-League next year. With all these young guys we have, time is of the essence.

[Axel]

Here is another article which speaks to the positive of an org. having their own D team. If the contents are valid at all this could well be a boon but I personally have my doubts without seeing the improvements the coach speaks of:





http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blo...d-to-defy-odds

Great find. Makes it seem a lot more legit than the bush league marketing ploy it seemed (which I totally wouldn't put past their bat shit crazy owner).

Hope he manages to be more than a marketing side show and can actually play a small role on the court.

[Axel]

I don't care where they put the team, they just need to make it happen ASAP. We are behind the times and dragging our heels (sounds about right for MLSE).