Sometimes a person really needs to be brought back down to earth. A person can sometimes be a little overconfident, and they need to experience something that will reset them and get back on the right path.
For Philadelphia 76ers guard Justin Anderson, a trip to the G League did the trick.
After playing a prominent role for Philadelphia in the 2017-18 season, he was sent to the Atlanta Hawks in the Mike Muscala deal. He averaged 9.4 minutes over 48 games. He signed with the Washington Wizards and was waived less than a month later. He did not find a home until January when he signed a 10-day deal with the Brooklyn Nets.
He then split time between the Long Island Nets and Raptors 905 of the G League in the 2019-20 season before earning playing time with the Nets in the bubble.
“A lot of guys don’t have to go through that experience in Year 5,” said Anderson. “I had an opportunity to go overseas, but I truly felt like I belong. I just think that the timing and the way the rosters were built out last year and people having their teams kind of in order, I fell short of making that roster spot on a lot of teams and I felt like, and my agent felt like, we were so close that for me, I think I needed to go in the G League and prove a few things.”
After being such a big piece in college at the University of Virginia and then earning some playing time in the early part of his career, Anderson found himself on the verge of being out of the league. He needed that time in the G League to give him that reset and get him back focused again.
“Not necessarily saying that I needed humbling, but it was a humbling experience going from flying private to having to fly commercial and driving on a bus for long hours to different cities, those things force you to grow in ways that you’ve never really known before,” he explained. “Being able to be here now is a different type of taking advantage of the opportunity. It’s just trusting the work that I’ve put in and try to be a small piece of a major puzzle.”
Anderson played well in the G League. He averaged 20.6 points and 6.7 rebounds while shooting 35.3% from deep. He didn’t go in there with a “let me score all the points attitude”, but instead with a team-first attitude to make sure he can move in the right direction again.
“I signed up for it. I committed to it,” he continued. “I didn’t go there saying ‘I’m going to score this many amount of points or do this in order to get called up’ I said ‘I’m going to go here and help this team get better and try to be my best in order to lead the younger guys that were on those teams.’ At the same time, it was also scaling back and taking a step back and being coached and not trying to be a know it all or whatever the case may be.”
Anderson is a guy who plays with a lot of passion and a lot of charisma and that can rub people the wrong way. When he got to the G League, he had a very important conversation with Long Island’s general manager to help him turn this around.
“A lot of credit goes to Matt Riccardi who sat me down right away and told me straight up what the league says about me, what the rap is about me, and how we’re going to fix it and how we’re going to change it,” he finished with. “To this day, he still shoots me checking in texts and he was extremely happy with what I did to help that Long Island team and that just gives you confidence to continue to pursue and keep going because I know I belong. It’s just shaping the jagged edges you could say and I think I’ve done a great job with that so it’s about pushing forward.”
Anderson would not share what other teams said about him, but he added he uses it as motivation. He now has a new opportunity with the Sixers to fill a role on this team.
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