BATON ROUGE – A total of 10 former members of the LSU men’s basketball teams are on preseason rosters for training camps as NBA teams get ready for the 2016-17 season.
Monday was media day throughout the league as teams begin to get down to serious preparations.
Heading that list is veteran player Brandon Bass, who will move to a new team this year, and the No. 1 pick in the 2016 NBA Draft, Ben Simmons.
Bass, the SEC Player of the Year in 2005 for the Tigers, will enter his 12th year in the NBA and his first with the Los Angeles Clippers. Bass, once he plays in a regular season game, will move into solo second place in years in the league from LSU. Shaquille O’Neal played 19 seasons while Bass is presently tied with Bob Pettit and Pete Maravich for second with 11 years.
Simmons, the national Freshman of the Year, was chosen by the Philadelphia 76ers and will make his expected regular season debut on Oct. 26 against the OKC Thunder.
The Washington Wizards will have two former Tigers in training camp – Marcus Thornton and Johnny O’Bryant III. Thornton was with the Houston Rockets to start the year, but finished the 2015-16 roster on the Wizards roster, while O’Bryant III tries to make the Wizards roster after two years in Milwaukee.
Both Jordan Mickey in Boston and Jarell Martin in Memphis will be looking to make their marks in their second year in the league. Mickey got a lot of training time with the Maine team in the D-League, while Martin looks to rebound after a series of injuries.
Garrett Temple, who has done well in the league the last few years, moves to the West Coast after signing a three-year contract with the Sacramento Kings. This will be Temple’s seventh year in the league.
Justin Hamilton, after an All-Star season in Europe, is back in the NBA at training camp with the Brooklyn Nets and two other members of the 2015-16 Tiger squad, Tim Quarterman and Keith Hornsby, are at training camps looking to make rosters.
Quarterman is at the Portland Trailblazers camp and Hornsby is working out with the Dallas Mavericks.