Darius Bazley signed with the Brooklyn Nets this offseason on a one-year deal for the veteran’s minimum, according to Keith Smith of Spotrac. However, Bazley’s path to get to where he is now is one that is more common nowadays, but at the time, seemed to draw national attention for how novel the idea was.
Bazley, like most kids that go on to have fruitful careers in professional basketball, was a five-star recruit along with being a McDonald’s All-American. That meant that he could have went to any school of his choosing before deciding to go to the NBA. Despite initially committing and signing to play at Syracuse, Bazley chose to spend his one year out of high school differently.
Bazley thought that he was going to prepare by way of the G League, but eventually took a different path than that by deciding to spend the year in an internship with New Balance. Months later, Bazley became the 23rd overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft by the Utah Jazz before being traded to the Memphis Grizzlies who subsequently traded him to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
From there, Bazley, native of Boston, Massachusetts, had a solid four seasons in the league before becoming a free-agent this summer. While his standing within the NBA is undecided at this time, Brooklyn took a chance by signing the young man to be a part of something bigger than himself. On Thursday, Bazley was introduced by the team and he had some interesting things to say about why he came to Brooklyn as written by Lucas Kaplan of NetsDaily: