About a year ago, the Santa Cruz Warriors hosted their first official open tryouts at Aptos High School. It ended up becoming a bit of a media frenzy, with local rapper Brandon McCartney, better known by his stage name Lil B, showing up to compete for a spot, as well as 76-year-old professor Don Wiberg.
While this year’s field of hopefuls didn’t get quite that eccentric, there was a solid crop of talent among the 30 or so players that showed up. Bay Area street-ball legend Kiwi Gardner was likely the biggest local name at Kaiser Permanente Arena Sunday, but a number of former NCAA players were on the court as well.
PHOTOS: Santa Cruz Warriors Open Tryouts
The skill level varied mightily from player to player, but one standout (for mostly the wrong reasons) was 51-year old Michael Fechter. Not quite as old as Wiberg last year, but still every bit the odd ball out in a group of young athletes, Fechter, a comedic writer, was there setting up his next story, which will be a fantastical tale about his success at the tryout.
But tryouts aren’t usually all fun and games. For many of the players on the court, this is their last chance to break through, or perhaps the first in many professional tryouts across both countries and continents. These are once full-time athletes living in the real world while also trying to play out their dream of playing professional basketball.
For most, that dream will likely never become reality. New Santa Cruz Head Coach Casey Hill said as much in his introductory speech to his potential candidates. Last year, the franchise hosted two separate tryouts, with more than 100 players evaluated, and just one, Air Force Office Daniel Nwaelele, making the team.
Hill said the tryouts aren’t about a certain kind of player. For him and his staff, it’s all about talent, work ethic, and coachability. They’re just looking for talented players they think might have been overlooked.
“Basically with these tryouts it’s really just kind of looking for guys that have got talent. It’s more of a scouring of information on guys and seeing if guys are D-League ready and have got talent enough to play in the D-League. Then we start having a deeper conversation.”
D-League teams are allowed to bring 17 players to training camp, and Hill expects to fill all of those spots. He’s not sure how many of the players from open tryouts (both from Sunday and Saturday, October 19 in Oakland) might be a part of that roster.
“Depending on who returns and what kind of guys we get out of the draft there are spots that are open for local tryout guys. So really what it is, we look at these guys and keep notes on it. With the draft and the guys who are coming back, as soon as we know a number then we can kind of talk about bringing guys from the local tryouts in.”
The Warriors will likely be bringing back about half the roster that went to the D-League Finals last season, while a number of players have made their way to NBA training camps this fall.
“I’ve talked to a couple guys who’ve told me they’re coming back. No one has signed their contracts or anything, but verbal contracts in the D-League are pretty solid. I’d say right now we’ve probably got about seven guys locked in for the season, so there’s 10 spots open for training camp. Now, whether we get those guys from the local tryout or the draft, we just don’t know.”
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