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For D-League Basketball Players, a Chance at a Dream, Minus the Glamor

Rowan Moore Gerety
Credit Rowan Moore Gerety
Warriors players huddle during a break in practice

The average NBA player earns over $5 million a season. That’s more than Major League Baseball, and more than the NFL. But there are only 400 jobs in the NBA. And for players just one notch below—in the NBA Development league—the glamor of pro sports fades pretty quickly. 

 
 

On the court, the Santa Cruz Warriors feel every bit like an NBA team, with towering players sinking dunks and 3-pointers, and cheering fans in face paint who came to support them in a game against the Sioux Falls Skyforce.
 
 

Off the court, it’s a different story. The players ride a bus and fly coach to away games. They buy their own sneakers. There’s no weight room at the Kaiser Permanente  arena, so they work out in a hallway, doing pull-ups from a beam in the ceiling.
 
 

Credit Rowan Moore Gerety
The Kaiser Permanente Arena, home of the Santa Cruz Warriors

But no matter who you ask, most players would change one thing. “The pay,” says guard Moe Baker, now in his 8th season in the D-League. “The pay.” Baker’s salary has topped out at $25,000 for a 6 month season: rookies make a $13,000.  “The money you make in the D-League season,” Baker says, “you can survive off of it, but it’s gonna run out real quick.” 
 
 

Over the years, Baker has earned more playing pro basketball abroad, in the Philippines, Turkey, and France. “Some guys can make a D-League Salary in one month, goin’ overseas,” he says.
 
 

"Here, every night, it's NBA scouts in the building."

  Despite the difference in pay, though, some players prefer to play for D-League teams like the Santa Cruz Warriors. What the D-League offers, Baker says, is the chance to play regularly for a small but important audience—“here, every night, it’s NBA scouts in the building,” Baker says. 
 
 

When NBA teams see something they need, D-league players get a “call up,” a ten-day contract to play in the NBA. A few, like Jeremy Lin and Chris Andersen, have gone on to become NBA stars. That outcome is pretty rare. So Santa Cruz coach Casey Hill says players weigh other factors too.  
 
 
“The decision really ends up coming down to, am I comfortable going to play in a foreign country that, they don’t speak my language, I don’t know if they’re gonna pay me,” Hill says. “There’s so many unknowns with going overseas that guys just kinda get scared away.”
 
 

Even for players without NBA prospects, playing in the D-League can be a useful bargaining chip. “They’ll play a year in the D-League, to get that on their resume, to get their numbers up,” Hill explains, “and then they’ll use those numbers to get a good deal in Europe.”
 
 

Some analysts are more cynical. Jonathan Givony owns the basketball site DraftExpress.com. He says there are only so many spots on European teams. As he sees it, “80 to 90% of the players that are in the D-League are in the D-League because they have nowhere else to be.
 
 

He says the D-league’s focus on call-ups hurts the style of play: “It’s the only league in the world that I know of where wins and losses isn’t really the goal. In the back of the players’ heads, they’re sayin’ like, I’m here to get noticed.” 
 
 

Givony says that leads to poor defense and extremely high scores. Even so, more D-League players are getting noticed each year—the number of call-ups has grown from just a handful in the league’s first year to more than thirty last season. 
 
 

That goes for more than just players: more than half of NBA refs were hired directly out of the D-league. D-League president Dan Reed says the league is “a platform for coaches, for players, for referees, for dance team members, for front office executives, for salespeople, for broadcasters.” One reason for that is that the NBA actually owns the D-League.  We’re the only minor league that is actually controlled by the major league,” Reed says.
 
 

That relationship is only growing closer. More and more NBA teams are starting to manage affiliates in the D-League directly. In Santa Cruz, the Golden State Warriors decide everything from the plays coaches run in practice to who ends up on the training staff.
 

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