Jerome Randle, last season's Pac-10 Player of the Year, will play his first professional season in Turkey as he has reportedly signed with Aliaga Petkim according to Turkbasket.
The 5-foot-10 point guard, dubbed a "super squirt" according to the headline I Google-translated in the Turkish media, led Cal with 18.6 points per game last season to go with 4.3 assists while shooting a healthy 40+% from beyond the arc.
Randle played for the Orlando Magic in the Orlando Summer League, but the statistics weren't promising. They weren't even decent. In three games - including two starts - the point guard averaged 7.0 points and 3.3 assists while making just 6-of-25 from the field. Worse, though, was that the normally hot shooter from beyond the arc made just one of his nine attempts from beyond the arc.
Randle then had a second opportunity to prove his NBA-worth in Vegas with the Washington Wizards' Summer League team, and while it went better, I doubt many people walked away believing he was a shoo-in to play in the NBA next season. He ran the team the way we became accustomed to in his time at Cal, made 47% of his field goal attempts and didn't seem to get down following his awful performance in Orlando.
All of that said, I guess, is a longwinded way of saying that Randle didn't impress enough people in the Summer Leagues to make them forget he's just 5-foot-10 and has trouble on the defensive end due to that fact.
In Turkey, Randle will reportedly team up with Aubrey Coleman to form what would have been the best scoring backcourt in the NCAA this past season.
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