National Basketball Association

NBA D-League tryout offers last grasp of dream of pro contract

Published Sep. 10, 2014 10:55 a.m. ET

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MINNEAPOLIS -- Lacing up his sneakers inside the United Center locker room, Charles Boozer thought he'd finally found himself.

Things had been clicking in practice. For the first time in his three-year career at Iowa State, he was gaining a comfort level. This night, he'd face off against the Duke program that had cultivated his more well-known brother Carlos, who signed with the Lakers this past offseason after four years with the United Center's main tenant, the Chicago Bulls.

Charles played just four minutes and attempted one field goal against the Blue Devils. But three days later -- Saturday, Jan. 9, 2010 -- the junior guard went off at home against North Dakota State, pouring in a career-high 19 points.

"I felt good about my game. Then I got a chance," the younger Boozer said, "and I exploded for a great game."

It was the last time he'd play collegiately.

A torn ACL in the Cyclones' next game against Texas ended Charles Boozer's season. His decision to seek treatment after being arrested for assaulting a woman ended his time in Ames the following summer.

Four years later, Boozer was racing up and down the private court at the Target Center's Lifetime Fitness center, usually used as the Minnesota Timberwolves' practice facility. But Saturday, it housed an open NBA Developmental League tryout for anyone interested in trying to crack the Fort Wayne Mad Ants' roster.

It's a chance at grasping the lowest of the lowest NBA branches. But Boozer showed up for the 7:30 a.m. check-in, anyway.

"I missed the game," Boozer said. "I missed competing against guys, I missed just having fun. Life is so serious most of the time, you've got to find a way to release the anger and just do what you love to do, and that's basketball for me. That was the goal, to finish up what I started as a kid."

Such were the aspirations of him and 12 other men who paid the $150, non-refundable fee to work out in front of coach Conner Henry for four hours Saturday. It's one of six such open tryouts for the D-League's last remaining team without an exclusive NBA affiliation; the Wolves and 12 other clubs have the option to send players to or from Fort Wayne.

Long odds

The D-League is most prominently regarded as a farm system, giving under-contract players like Shabazz Muhammad -- who averaged 24.5 points on 57.1 percent shooting and 9.8 rebounds in four games with the Iowa Energy last season -- some run while they'd otherwise warm an NBA bench.

But it's also a last gasp of basketball air for some careers. Not every D-League player comes attached to an NBA team; in fact, the majority of them are drafted or signed directly into the minor league as free agents.

"The D-League does a nice job in allowing players who may or may not have had a great college career, may have suffered injuries, may have had a family tragedy, they get washed out of basketball, they get forgotten," said Henry, who spent part of two NBA seasons jumping from team to team in the mid-1980s, "this is an opportunity for them to come in and play."

So Henry and his small personnel staff will scour the country looking for them. After Minnesota, open tryouts in Chicago, Brooklyn, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Inglewood, Calif., and Fort Wayne, Ind., await.

They'll select a name or names from each pool and lump them into a group of 10 or so players who might be worthy of a training camp invite. At most, Henry said, two of them could receive that designation -- just to fight for a roster spot.

"You weed it out, weed it out," Henry said. "It's long odds."

For example, only Buffalo product Titus Robinson survived last year's round of Mad Ants tryouts, and he was one of Fort Wayne's last options off the bench. But Robinson was able to parlay what little playing time he received into a professional contract in Australia.

Stories like that of Ron Howard give guys like Boozer even more hope. Howard became the leading scorer in D-League history in March, roughly seven years after he made the team as open tryout participant.

And the best part of the story is that Howard showed up late for the audition.

Despite his successes, the 2014 MVP for the D-League Champion Mad Ants has never stuck in the NBA, despite a couple summer league appearances and contracts with Milwaukee (twice) and New York. Each time, he was waived.

He may end up overseas this season.

"(Howard) has had numerous seasons and numerous opportunities to make it," Henry said. "Unfortunately, he hasn't stuck, but he's made a living."

The itch

Some men, like Howard -- a teammate of Dwyane Wade's at Marquette before transferring to Valparaiso -- can't give up the dream. Count Charles Boozer among them.

After leaving Iowa State, he transferred to Wichita State but didn't play basketball there. He married his wife Sanaz and planned to go into law enforcement near his Bay Area home.

But the itch to play never left. And Boozer's wife made sure he scratched it.

"When I met her, I was done playing" said Boozer, who said he's two credits short of obtaining his degree, "and she was like 'you're pretty good at this. Keep doing it.' I was like 'alright.' She was the deciding factor in all this."

So Boozer joined up with the American Basketball Association's Texas Fuel last season. Saturday's tryout was his first opportunity at seizing a more stable opportunity -- a relative term, given the D-League's high turnover rate and average salary of just $12,000-$24,000.

But some turned heads domestically could help a player like Boozer one day land an overseas contract worth $65,000 or so, though every D-League player's pipe dream is to become the next Danny Green to make it in the NBA.

"I wanted to come here and try to kind of gauge where I was at as far as conditioning, as far as skill level, as far as the game IQ and go from there," said Boozer, who spent much of the summer working out with his brother in Miami. "We'll definitely see what happens."

The same goes for 22-year-old Mark Hoge, a Crosby, Minn., native and soon-to-be graduate of the University of Jamestown (N.D.). He comes from a town of about 2,300 and played for an NAIA Division II college with less than 1,000 students enrolled.

Not exactly the prime harbinger for a professional basketball career. But Hoge, who is a completed internship away from a mass communications degree, can't give it up.

"The only time I feel right is when I'm on a basketball court," he said.

That was evident Saturday as Hoge and Boozer knifed their way through opponents and locked them down defensively. Almost right away, Henry decided to hang on to both of their names and weigh them against the top participants at other tryouts this offseason.

When it comes to the percentages, the coach will likely share some more negative news with them between now and the start of the 2014-15 season. But there's a mutual appreciation for youngsters exhausting every possible avenue to make themselves into a professional basketball player.

Henry did it himself. After a standout career at the University of California-Santa Barbara, he was drafted by Houston in the fourth round of the 1986 NBA Draft.

Henry played 93 NBA games from 1986-88, including 36 for the 1986-87 Celtics team that lost in the NBA Finals. He was signed and waived on three separate occasions.

"I had to work hard, and so when I see guys that work incredibly hard and don't quit, I like those guys," said Henry, who spent 10 more years playing professionally in the Continental Basketball Association, Italy, Spain, France and Greece. "Because in my case, it just so happened that a door opened and I had a chance, somehow, I impressed somebody, and that person allowed me to have another chance and then another chance, and I was able to make a career."

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