Ranking best remaining players in NBA playoffs, from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Victor Wembanyama to Jalen Brunson<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cComing home to Melbourne feels incredibly special,\u201d he told the club’s website.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTo return to where my professional career began almost 20 years ago is something I don\u2019t take for granted. So much has happened since then, but Melbourne has always felt like home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really excited to reconnect with the community here, and to be closer to family and friends again. After so many years overseas, that part means a lot to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom a basketball perspective, this opportunity really excited me. I still love competing, I still love the game, and I believe I can genuinely help this group win.<\/p>\n
Next season will mark Ingles’ first time back in the NBL in nearly two decades.<\/p>\n
Ingles began his professional career for the South Dragons, helping the team win an NBL championship in the club’s final season before they pulled themselves from the league, due to a lack of confidence in the league’s future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
From there he played in Europe, having notable stints in Spain and Israel that helped him catch the eye of NBA scouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ingles would sign with the Utah Jazz ahead of the 2014-15 season, and become a staple of the team for nearly a decade, featuring in a number of playoff runs before being traded in 2022.<\/p>\n
His last few seasons in the league saw him bounce around from Milwaukee to Orlando, before settling in Minnesota as the Timberwolves became one of the Western Conference’s elite teams.<\/p>\n
The Wolves made the second round of this year’s playoffs but were ultimately eliminated by the Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs 4-2 in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
For his career, Ingles averaged 7.7 points, 3.5 assists and three rebounds in 23.5 minutes per game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Longtime NBA veteran and Olympic bronze medallist Joe Ingles is officially set to return home to Australia, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-680064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680064","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=680064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}