announced<\/a> it was signing Morales to a two-way contract, giving him the chance to earn meaningful minutes at the next level after excelling in the G League within the organization.<\/p>\nMorales, who starred on Grymes Hill from 2019 to 2022 after transferring from Prince George\u2019s Community College in Maryland, built an impressive r\u00e9sum\u00e9 during his time on Staten Island. Most notably, he earned NEC Player-of-the-Year honors during his senior season, becoming just the third player in program history to capture the award. <\/p>\n
He also made conference history during the 2020\u201321 regular season, becoming the only player in the NEC to earn four Player-of-the-Week honors.<\/p>\n
Morales declared for the NBA Draft after completing his fourth year of collegiate competition, and although he went undrafted, he carved out a steady role with the Magic\u2019s G League affiliate, the Osceola Magic, appearing in 112 games.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s clear Morales never abandoned his NBA aspirations. After patiently waiting for his opportunity, he has seized it; his scorching start to the G League season\u2014averaging 19.2 points, 8.0 rebounds, and 3.2 assists in 18 appearances\u2014became impossible for Orlando to overlook. If that production carries over, it could translate to success at the highest level.<\/p>\n
The guard also gained valuable experience overseas with Osos de Manat\u00ed, who competes in Baloncesto Superior Nacional \u2014 Puerto Rico\u2019s top professional league \u2014 giving him a well-rounded perspective from competing at multiple levels of the game.<\/p>\n
Adding his name to a list that includes Chris Ledlum and Mouhamadou Gueye \u2014 standouts who played their pre-professional basketball on Staten Island \u2014 Morales has become yet another local product to reach the pinnacle of the sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.\u2014 Former Wagner College Seahawk Alex Morales is finally getting his opportunity at the NBA level,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-137926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}