Veteran forward Zylan Cheatham, who has appeared in NBA games for the Jazz and Pelicans since 2019, will resume his playing career in the EuroLeague. According to reporting from BasketNews.com, German club Bayern Munich added Chatham to its roster ahead of today’s deadline for EuroLeague teams to register new players.
After going undrafted out of Arizona State in 2019, Cheatham began his professional career on a two-way contract with the Pelicans, spending his entire rookie season with the team, though he only appeared in four NBA games.
Cheatham was sent to Oklahoma City in a sign-and-trade for salary-matching purposes during the 2020 offseason in the deal that landed Steven Adams in New Orleans, but was waived by the Thunder a week later. Since then, he has primarily played in the G League, though he did sign 10-day contracts with Miami, Utah, and New Orleans last season.
Here are a few more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- The NBA has officially confirmed the dates for this year’s Las Vegas Summer League, announcing (via Twitter) that it will take place from July 7-17.
- Teams are beginning the vetting process of former Celtics head coach Ime Udoka, according to Steve Bulpett of Heavy.com. Bulpett explores what teams want to know about Udoka and what steps he might have to take to land a new job following his year-long suspension and his subsequent exit from Boston.
- Suns forward Kevin Durant and Kings forward Harrison Barnes are among the former Olympic medalists who are part of USA Basketball’s Board of Directors. Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press explores what that role entails, noting that Durant has sought to have real input on the program, rather than just having an honorary seat at the table.
- Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic polled a handful of players at All-Star weekend about what they’d change about the NBA and received some interesting responses, including Anthony Edwards criticizing the concept of load management (“Just play, man. If you 80 percent, you got to play. I don’t like all this sitting, missing games and stuff”) and Tyrese Haliburton advocating for the league to expand (“The talent in the world right now is amazing, so to add two more teams would be good for our league”).
Haliburton speaking big truth right there. The level of talent in the NBA & the size of the pool talent world-wide & across age levels has just exploded in the past few yrs. Older guys nowadays are way better then older guys 10 or even 5yrs ago. Same with younger guys. Shot making has especially improved but just across the board guys are more skilled & more versatile & seem to think the game on a higher level than guys in any other era & almost exponentially so. I dont see why it has to be 2 tho. I wouldn’t mind seeing the nba adding 3 teams or even go global & add like 6.
I think it should be 4 within the next 10 years. 2 within these next 2-3, and 2 more a few years later, but I’ve been saying that for a few years now
Ant had some words wise beyond his age there, ’bout time that players started talking against load management!!!
Hali too is right, 2 more teams are waaay overdue with the amount of talent & stars in the league right now!
Expansion would answer the load management issue, too. There are so many guys who have fallen out of their teams’ rotations that can still play at a high level. I’m a Nets’ fan and it’s painful to watch because they have more wings than KFC and no superstars anymore. The bench players could easily be in the rotation of an expansion team.
Summer league is a blast