Los Angeles Lakers<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe minutes were mostly short. He got eight a night across 61 games in two years with the Hawks, and four and a half across 17 games with the Lakers in 2023-24.<\/p>\n
Portland gave him more. Those six starts came in 2022-23, and he shot 50 per cent from the field and 46.2 per cent from three in them.<\/p>\n
Across two Portland seasons he averaged 8.3 points and 4.6 assists in 20.2 minutes.<\/p>\n
Mays left the NBA after 2023-24 and went to Europe, first the Turkish league, then KK Buducnost in Montenegro.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Defence first<\/p>\n
Schwartz signed a week before Mays. He pointed to King’s system when he did.<\/p>\n
“I think he’s bringing a different brand of basketball, really fast, picking up full court. A lot of threes,” Schwartz said.<\/p>\n
“Here the big thing will really be defence. That’s the identity of this team.”<\/p>\n
Mays has the record for it. He finished second in the Southeastern Conference for steals per game as a junior at LSU, averaging 1.9. He was fourth as a sophomore and fourth again as a senior.<\/p>\n
His 66 steals in 2018-19 ranked third in the conference. His 213 career steals sit 19th in SEC history.<\/p>\n
The scoring came later. As a senior in 2019-20 he put up 16.7 points, five rebounds and 3.2 assists, shooting 49.1 per cent from the field, 39.4 from three and 85.4 from the line.<\/p>\n
He ranked fifth in the SEC for field-goal percentage that season, fourth for effective field-goal percentage and fifth for true shooting at 62.2 per cent.<\/p>\n
Mays made First Team All-SEC as a senior after Second Team as a junior.<\/p>\n
He left LSU with 1,613 points, 470 rebounds, 382 assists and 213 steals from 130 games. He started 121 of them.<\/p>\n
Atlanta drafted him 50th overall in 2020. He debuted on December 23 that year.<\/p>\n
The roster<\/p>\n
Mays joins Nathan Sobey, Angus Glover, Jordan Hunter, Tanner Krebs, Dash Daniels, Akech Aliir, Ellis Biggar, Daniel Foster, Patrick Ryan, Hunter Goodrick and Schwartz under Josh King.<\/p>\n
The Phoenix have one local and one import spot left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Skylar Mays was a top-four SEC guard for steals three years running. Josh King wants him up and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":828671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-828670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828670","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=828670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/828671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}