Trinidadian John­ny Hamil­ton hopes to make the NBA regular season

By Stabroek News On In Trinidad & Tobago News |
Johnny Hamilton of Rio Claro poses outside of the Detroit Pistons locker room on Monday at Little Caesars Arena in downtown Detroit. Hamilton began training camp on Tuesday with the Pistons in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the University of Michigan.
Johnny Hamilton of Rio Claro poses outside of the Detroit Pistons locker room on Monday at Little Caesars Arena in downtown Detroit. Hamilton began training camp on Tuesday with the Pistons in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the University of Michigan.

(TRINIDAD GUARDIAN) John­ny Hamil­ton’s wind­ing jour­ney from south Trinidad has tak­en him to the doorstep of the NBA.

Now, the 24-year-old sev­en-foot­er from Rio Claro just has to bust through that last step to the world’s high­est pro­fes­sion­al bas­ket­ball stage.

Hamil­ton start­ed train­ing camp this week with the De­troit Pis­tons af­ter im­press­ing team of­fi­cials dur­ing his play in NBA Sum­mer League re­cent­ly in Las Ve­gas.

He is one of 20 play­ers in camp with the Pis­tons, who will have 15 play­ers on their stan­dard ros­ter dur­ing the reg­u­lar sea­son. With a re­port­ed par­tial­ly guar­an­teed con­tract, Hamil­ton is ex­pect­ed to be­gin the sea­son with the Grand Rapids Dri­ve of the NBA G League, a team af­fil­i­at­ed with the Pis­tons that is one step away from the NBA.

“It’s amaz­ing. They re­al­ly like me and that’s re­al­ly helped,” Hamil­ton said Mon­day as the Pis­tons met with me­dia mem­bers at Lit­tle Cae­sars Are­na in down­town De­troit. “Every­one mess­es with me and teach­es me. If I mess up in prac­tice with a drill or some­thing, they’ll ac­tu­al­ly stop prac­tice and show me how to do it right.”

Hamil­ton caught on with the Pis­tons dur­ing the sum­mer league, which is sep­a­rate from the NBA’s reg­u­lar sea­son and gives young play­ers and free agents like Hamil­ton a chance to prove them­selves.

The cen­tre showed enough – scor­ing 4.0 points, grab­bing 6.7 re­bounds and block­ing 1.7 shots per game in three games – to war­rant the Pis­tons ex­tend­ing a con­tract to Hamil­ton to join the team in train­ing camp.

Af­ter Las Ve­gas, Hamil­ton joined the Pis­tons for off-sea­son team work­outs in Los An­ge­les, play­ing along­side NBA All-Stars such as An­dre Drum­mond and Blake Grif­fin.

“They re­al­ly like spend­ing time and work­ing on me get­ting bet­ter as a play­er, even though I just start­ed,” Hamil­ton said.

In LA, he al­so met Kevin Du­rant, Hamil­ton’s favourite play­er when he start­ed watch­ing the NBA while Du­rant was with the Ok­la­homa City Thun­der.

“He was a re­al­ly nice guy,” Hamil­ton said of Du­rant, now with the Gold­en State War­riors.

Hamil­ton is hop­ing to join a short list of play­ers born in T&T to make the NBA.

Ken Charles played five sea­sons with the Buf­fa­lo Braves and At­lanta Hawks from 1973-78 and Carl Her­rera played eight sea­sons with four teams from 1991-99, win­ning two NBA cham­pi­onships with the Hous­ton Rock­ets.

He al­so has some fam­i­ly lin­eage in the game, as his fa­ther, Tony, was an ac­com­plished play­er in T&T’s top bas­ket­ball league.

Tony Hamil­ton, a preach­er who is nick­named “Corn­bread” af­ter Ja­maal Wilkes’ char­ac­ter in the 1975 movie “Corn­bread, Earl and Me,” played in Trinidad on teams in Rio Claro and San Fer­nan­do with stand­outs like Lennox Sobers and Joseph Lenny Guy.

“I’m sure I fol­low in my dad’s foot­steps,” Hamil­ton said. “I try to get back once a year, twice a year on a good year. I haven’t been home in the past year and four months. Hope­ful­ly, I can be there for Christ­mas but if I don’t then next sum­mer.”

Hamil­ton was a foot­ball play­er in high school but went to Jack­sonville Col­lege in Texas to play bas­ket­ball af­ter tak­ing up the game up as a 16-year-old.

Af­ter two sea­sons, Hamil­ton went to Vir­ginia Tech but suf­fered a thumb in­jury dur­ing his se­nior year. Af­ter grad­u­at­ing with a de­gree in so­ci­ol­o­gy, he at­tend­ed one post-grad year at Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas-Ar­ling­ton (UTA), scor­ing 11.1 points, grab­bing 8.1 re­bounds and block­ing 2.3 shots per game.

UTA team­mate Kevin Her­vey was draft­ed by Ok­la­homa City, but Hamil­ton was not se­lect­ed in June’s NBA Draft.

But Hamil­ton caught on with the Pis­tons in Ve­gas in Ju­ly and made the most of his op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“I re­bound­ed, I blocked shots, I ran the floor,” he said. “I did ex­act­ly what I was told to do. It was great.”

Hamil­ton al­so trained in the off-sea­son in Chica­go be­fore com­ing to De­troit, where new head coach Dwane Casey gave Hamil­ton a “role card,” where each play­er’s tasks are writ­ten out by the coach­ing staff.

“He said you just need to pro­tect the rim, pro­tect the paint, screen and roll hard to the rim,” Hamil­ton said. “Not a whole lot of peo­ple get the chance for the head coach to stop prac­tice and ex­plain some­thing. He doesn’t mind how many times I mess up. He sees po­ten­tial in me and takes time to teach me cer­tain things so I’m re­al­ly hap­py for that.”

Hamil­ton and the Pis­tons be­gan pre­sea­son games on Wednes­day against the Ok­la­homa City Thun­der, the first of five ex­hi­bi­tion games be­fore the team will make its cuts.

“I’m go­ing to be work­ing on that re­al­ly hard this train­ing camp and hope­ful­ly if I don’t make the team, I still have a chance to come back in the sea­son and play a few games with them,” Hamil­ton said.

The Pis­tons will open the reg­u­lar sea­son Oc­to­ber 17 against the Brook­lyn Nets. Grand Rapids opens the sea­son No­vem­ber 2 against the Erie Bay­Hawks.

“I’m very ex­cit­ed, I re­al­ly can’t be­lieve that I’m here,” he said. “I’m re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to it. I’m go­ing to do my job if I get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do it. So I’m go­ing to work hard in prac­tice so I do get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do it.”