Why Grant Jerrett's NBA D-League Draft Fate Has Interesting Implications

By hitting the NBADL hardwood prior to even declaring for the NBA Draft, Glen Rice Jr. took an interesting path to The Association. After playing for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers last season, the young gun was officially drafted by Washington Wizards this past June.

If such a journey wasn't interesting enough, however, this new basketball season is poised to offer yet another interesting avenue (of getting to the NBA) via Arizona big man Grant Jerrett.

Jerrett's name is in the D-League player pool for Friday night's draft. His fate for the upcoming season will obviously be revealed not long after, but alas, they come packaged with some pretty interesting implications.

The 20 year old was drafted by the Portland Trail Blazers as the 40th overall selection in the NBA Draft earlier this summer. And though he was subsequently traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder, Jerrett never actually went on to sign a formal contract with the team.

Earlier this month, it was initially believed that OKC would go on to retain Jerrett's rights as he played with the affiliated Tulsa 66ers this coming season. While all of this could still go on to happen, the latter isn't guaranteed.

Upon the big man entering the D-League, the Thunder will still retain Jerrett's rights. That's the obvious and easy part, but after that, it gets tricky. Because his name is in the minor league draft player pool, the Arizona product can actually be selected by any of the NBADL's seventeen teams. The caveat to such a selection would be that regardless of which affiliate Jerrett is drafted by, the Thunder are the only NBA team for which he could go on to play for this season, should he eventually be called up. They have his rights, and that's that.

That said, the 66ers have to actually draft Jerrett with one of their selections on Friday night if they want him to don such a uniform. The question remains, will another team do so before they have the opportunity? One has to wonder by if drafting Jerrett, any team not named the 66ers would just be developing the big man simply for Oklahoma City's benefit in long run, anyway.