Joe Santoro
Sports Fodder:
The Nevada Wolf Pack, all things considered, has a wonderful history in the National Basketball Association.
Nobody is ever going to confuse the Wolf Pack with the Duke Blue Devils, Kentucky Wildcats, UCLA Bruins, North Carolina Tar Heels, Kansas Jayhawks, Indiana Hoosiers or any of the other basketball factories that fill NBA rosters year after year.
But the Wolf Pack, a program that has only advanced as far as the Sweet 16 twice in its history, has an NBA history it certainly can be proud of. Nine Wolf Pack players have played at least four seasons and 200-plus games in the NBA. JaVale McGee lasted 16 years and 909 games and won three NBA championships and is the model and inspiration for all Pack players wishing to make the move to the league.
But Ramon Sessions played 11 years and got into 691 games, David Wood played seven years and 412 games and Luke Babbitt lasted eight years and 381 games. Edgar Jones (363 games), Caleb Martin (311 games) and Cody Martin (259 games) all lasted six years with the Martin twins still currently active and likely on their way to a 10-plus-year careers. Johnny High (274 games) and Kirk Snyder (211) each lasted four seasons.
We remind you of this Wolf Pack history on the eve of another NBA draft this week (Wednesday and Thursday) when Kobe Sanders has a relatively good chance of becoming the 17th Pack player in history to be selected.
The 6-foot-8 Sanders is considered throughout the internet to be a likely pick late in the second round. The last Pack player picked was Jalen Harris in 2020 in the second round by Toronto.
Sanders, who averaged 15.8 points, 3.9 rebounds and 4.5 assists last season in his first and only Wolf Pack season, would be just the 12th Pack player picked in the first or second round.
Alex Boyd (13th round, 1970), Marvin Buckley (13th, 1974), Pete Padgett (sixth, 1976), B.B. Fontenet (sixth, 1982), Sam Moseley (fourth, 1983) and Billy Allen (sixth, 1983) were picked before the NBA streamlined its draft to just two rounds in 1989.
Getting drafted is a nice thing to tell the grandchildren someday but once you get past the first round it really doesn't matter much when it comes to a long and fruitful NBA career. Wood and Caleb Martin weren't even drafted out of Nevada. Players such as Nick Fazekas, Kevinn Pinkney, and Cam Oliver all had at least a cup of coffee in the NBA after not getting drafted.
Sanders, who played four seasons at Cal Poly, would be the first to either get drafted or play in at least one NBA game having played just one season with the Wolf Pack.
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One has to wonder whether Sanders would have returned to the Wolf Pack if he had another year of eligibility remaining.
A total of 50 of the 106 early-entry candidates withdrew from the NBA draft by the May 28 deadline when they likely found out they were not going to be drafted in the first round. We will likely see the number of withdrawals by early-entry candidates increase in the coming years as more players realize they can now earn more money per year in college rather than bouncing around basketball's minor leagues, which is the fate of most second-round picks or free agents.
One former Pack player made that exact decision this spring. Darrion Williams, the Mountain West freshman of the year in his only season (2022-23) at Nevada, was one of the 106 early-entry candidates but withdrew from the draft and transferred from Texas Tech to North Carolina State instead. Some media outlets have suggested that Williams will earn around $1 million from North Carolina State, or about what his former coach (Steve Alford) earns coaching the Wolf Pack.
Miles Byrd of San Diego State also withdrew from the draft and, so far, has remained with the Aztecs.
Sanders' biggest mistake was likely staying at Cal Poly for four years. Had he jumped to the Wolf Pack a year earlier he would now have had a chance to stay in the draft, stay at Nevada for another year or seek a larger NIL deal at a bigger school and then go into the draft in 2026.
College athletes once were only concerned with balancing the classroom and the basketball court. Now they also must take into consideration their earning potential. The reality is that the vast majority of players will earn more money now in college than they ever will in the NBA.
That, ironically, is the only positive to come out of NIL. It is, without question, keeping more players in college longer than they would have stayed pre-NIL.
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The Oklahoma City Thunder capped off a sensational season by beating the Indiana Pacers, 103-91, on Sunday for the NBA championship. The Thunder won 68 games in the regular season, the most by an eventual NBA champion since the 1996-97 Chicago Bulls won 69.
How will the Thunder be remembered? The reality of the NBA is that the Thunder won't be remembered all that often if they don't win at least another title. That's what happens to NBA teams that don't reside somewhere between the Los Angeles Lakers in the West or Philadelphia 76ers in the East. The conversation returns to the Lakers, 76ers, New York Knicks, Miami Heat or Boston Celtics the second the last piece of confetti falls to the ground after the championship parade.
The Thunder had a superstar in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander but the first time most of the country saw him play was in these NBA Finals. SGA is a great player but he's more in the Kawhi Leonard, Paul Pierce, Jayson Tatum, Tim Duncan, Dwyane Wade, Moses Malone, Dirk Nowitzki mold — great players who won titles but were never ever going to be the face of the league like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Steph Curry, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Kobe Bryant.
The Thunder's title was also tainted a bit by the Pacers' Tyrese Haliburton getting injured in Game 7 and playing just seven minutes. Haliburton had three threes before he got hurt and likely would have been able to overcome the eventual 12-point difference in the two teams by himself had he played 35-38 minutes.
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The Thunder’s Mark Daigneault continued a trend of unsung head coaches winning NBA titles in recent years.
Before Daigneault, we saw Boston's Joe Mazzulla and Denver's Michael Malone win titles the two previous seasons. Milwaukee's Mike Budenholzer won in 2021 after the Los Angeles Lakers' Fran Vogel in 2020 and Toronto's Nick Nurse in 2019.
All were and still are great coaches (though Malone was fired this past season) but weren't generally considered NBA championship material before they won a title. This is a league that was built on celebrated legendary head coaches such as Red Auerbach, Red Holzman, John Kundla, Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Steve Kerr, Gregg Popovich, Chuck Daley, Rudy Tomjanovich and others who seemingly shared the titles for decades.
That trend is officially over.
The 40-year-old Daigneault might be the most unknown, unlikely NBA title winner in the history of the league's coaches. He didn't even play college basketball, instead spending his college years as a student manager for the UConn Huskies under head coach Jim Calhoun from 2003-07. Calhoun then helped get Daigneault an assistant coaching job at Holy Cross.
Daigneault then went to the Florida Gators to get his master's degree and coach under future Thunder coach Billy Donovan. Daigneault then followed Donovan to the Thunder where he first coached the Thunder's G-League team before becoming Donovan's assistant and eventually taking over as head coach in 2020-21 when Donovan left to take over the Chicago Bulls.
Daigneault had a losing record his first three years as OKC head coach as the Thunder went into a full rebuild, stockpiling draft picks and trading for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He won 57 games and reached the conference semifinals in 2023-24 before dominating the league this year after stealing defensive specialist Alex Caruso from Donovan's Bulls in a trade before the season.
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The real hero of the Thunder is not Daigneault or SGA. It is general manager Sam Presti.
The 48-year-old Presti, who has been the Thunder GM since they were known as the Seattle SuperSonics in 2007-08, masterminded the rebuild that won this year's title.
Rebuilds rarely work in the NBA. Ask the Philadelphia 76ers. It's a league built on superstars acquired through trades, draft picks and free agency.
He traded Paul George for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in July 2019 and six days later got rid of Russell Westbrook, dealing him to the Houston Rockets. A year later, Presti replaced Donovan with Daigneault and then drafted Chet Homgren in 2022. His trade for Alex Caruso before this season was the final piece to a championship puzzle.
The rebuild began after Presti failed to win a title with the likes of Kevin Durant, James Hardin, Paul George, Carmelo Anthony and Westbrook. He jumped into the rebuild pool with both feet and took a different path, forming a championship team without superstars.
SGA is a superstar now, but he was an unknown gem with the Los Angeles Clippers before Presti acquired him in a trade before the 2019-20 season. Presti then added little-known pieces around SGA like Luguentz Dort, Cason Wallace, Aaron Wiggins, Isaiah Joe, Isaiah Hartenstein and Jalen Williams and somehow formed a title winner.
OKC used to be a city NBA players tried to avoid. OKC, after all, will never be known as a hidden Miami, Los Angeles, New York or Chicago. It's a college town that just happens to have an NBA team.
It's now the center of the NBA universe thanks to Presti. Well, it will be until LeBron starts complaining about something.
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The Wolf Pack's Sanders might not be the only Mountain West player picked in this week's draft.
Colorado State's Nique Clifford, a 6-foot-5 Swiss Army Knife-type of player, is considered among the players likely picked late in the first round on Wednesday night.
Clifford averaged 18.9 points, 9.6 rebounds and 4.4 assists for the Rams last season. He was the Mountain West Tournament MVP as Colorado State beat Boise State in the title game. His tournament began with a 25-point, 14-rebound, four-assist two-steal performance in an impressive 67-59 win over the Wolf Pack. After winning the Mountain West tournament, Clifford became nationally known with 21 points, eight rebounds and six assists against Memphis and 21 points, seven rebounds and six assists against Maryland in the NCAA Tournament.
Clifford's emergence this year as a possible first-round pick is what every Mountain West player dreams of. After three uneventful years at Colorado, he transferred to Colorado State before the 2023-24 season and averaged a good-but-not-great 12.2 points, 7.6 rebounds and three assists.
At that point he was looking at a pro basketball career of bouncing around European leagues with NBA tryouts sprinkled in that went nowhere. He is now a likely first-round pick in the draft with a clear path to an NBA job.