AAP.<\/p>\n
Australian basketball legend Andrew Gaze believes Alex Toohey can still have a “meaningful” NBA career after a devastating end to his first foray into the league.<\/p>\n
A season-ending knee injury left the Golden State Warriors to cut Toohey in December without playing the former Sydney Kings forward in a single NBA game.<\/p>\n
Toohey had been selected by the Phoenix Suns with the 52nd pick of last year’s NBA draft before being traded to the Warriors, and had big raps for his jump shot, basketball IQ and defence.<\/p>\n
But while last year’s three other Australian draftees remain contracted, Toohey is sidelined post-surgery, with a return to the high-flying Kings this NBL season also off the table.<\/p>\n
“It’s really disappointing when you get injured and you’re not able to put your best foot forward,” Gaze told AAP.<\/p>\n
“But I still think he has a long way before we put a line through him not being able to make the NBA.”<\/p>\n
Toohey is still only 21, having backed out of Gonzaga’s college basketball program to play two professional seasons with the Kings in the NBL’s Next Star program.<\/p>\n
The Canberra-born Toohey showed big improvements in the 2024\/25 NBL season on the back of a rigorous pre-season training with NBA types in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
“Like Dyson (Daniels) and Josh (Giddey) and some of these other (NBA) guys, he’s still very, very young,” Gaze said.<\/p>\n
“But he’s got the attributes. Hopefully he stays really positive because there’s no doubt he’s got the skills, he’s got the physical tools. The pathway can be different for everyone.”<\/p>\n
Gaze needed to wait four years between his first and second NBA seasons during his own playing career and urged Toohey to remember basketball journeys are not always linear.<\/p>\n
Australia’s Dante Exum, for instance, spent two seasons in Europe after being waived in 2021 before returning to the NBA as a role player at the Dallas Mavericks.<\/p>\n
“(Toohey) has got many, many years of continuing to grow and get better,” Gaze said.<\/p>\n
“His journey might take him to different parts of the world, might bring him back (to Australia).<\/p>\n
“The journey may be a little different but he’s on the radar and I think that he has a very, very strong prospect of having a meaningful NBA career.”<\/p>\n
\u200d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AAP. Australian basketball legend Andrew Gaze believes Alex Toohey can still have a “meaningful” NBA career after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-383787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}