The Rip City Remix, our new G-League Basketball team, will play its first game on Friday, Nov. 17! The team was announced in April of 2023, and will be playing at the University of Portland. A G-League team is a basketball team that isn’t part of the National Basketball Association (NBA) but is sponsored by the NBA. Players who hope to be drafted for the NBA but are too young or haven’t gotten a draft spot often play in the G-League, but it is also made up of players who only play for the team. G-League players are occasionally brought into the NBA if a team is down a player, which is referred to as a call-up. During the 2022-23 season, the Blazers had six players from the G-League play over the course of the year. In the past, we’ve always had to rely on other teams, but now we will be able to pull players directly from the Remix. This means they will be able to join the Blazers quickly, and have more knowledge of the team.
This G-League team can change a lot of things for the Portland basketball scene. I interviewed Peyton Miles, who is a point guard on Franklin’s Girls Varsity basketball team. I asked her about her opinion of the G-League coming to Portland, and she was very excited about the idea. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity that can come from…the whole new young team, that is a great way to grow talent and develop them [the players] around the culture that is the Trail Blazers, so they’re not coming to the team and being completely just not connected.” The team may garner more attention in the Portland basketball world, and Miles hopes it will improve morale and is looking forward to seeing “Homegrown heroes, people coming up from the G-League! Just getting to watch that will be kind of inspiring, and if and when [Damian] Lillard leaves, it will be someone to rally behind.”
The Remix has been holding tryouts to fill their roster. The first open tryout was announced on August 8, with the caption “You got game? Come prove it.” The tryout was held at the Blazers’ Training Facility, on Sept. 16. It was $300 to try out, and was closed to the public. Despite it being a private event, the Remix posted photos and videos of prospective players at the tryout on their Instagram account. They also announced a second round of tryouts, which took place in Seattle on Sept. 24. So far, we have a few players on the Remix’s roster. They are ages 21-27, and a few of the players were previously drafted for the NBA, but most are undrafted. The draft is when NBA teams get a list of potential players, most of whom are college age, and teams get to take turns picking players to be on their teams. Each team can only take so many players, so many hopefuls don’t get chosen to be on a team. These players often play in the G-League.
For some players, the G-League can be a good stepping stone into the NBA, especially for younger players. One such player is the Blazers’ own Scoot Henderson. He played for the G-League Ignite, which is a team dedicated to training promising young players. The team has NBA and G-League veterans training the players and is focused on preparing them for the NBA draft. It certainly worked well for Henderson, who was drafted in the first round, as the third pick, by the Blazers. He finished high school three semesters early to join the NBA Ignite and graduated in the class of 2022. Miles thinks the G-League can be a great support for young athletes. “If you have a talented young athlete who’s coming to the G-League and then they get to play sometimes [in the NBA], in the summer league or something with the greats, … [when they eventually do join an NBA team,] there will be a chemistry there, and that can improve the team a lot.”
The G-League has 31 teams. Just like the NBA, they draft and trade players, with other G-League and NBA teams. 29 of the G-Leage teams are specifically part of an NBA team, while the others aren’t. The teams all play 50-game schedules, whereas the NBA plays 82. Asher Sobel, a Franklin student and basketball fan, is “excited about the new prospects the G-League could bring the Blazers.”
The season is divided into two parts, the first being a competition called the Showcase Cup. It takes place every December, and the teams competing play against each other as part of four ‘pods’. They play the other teams in their pods, and the eight teams that do the best overall then play each other at the AT&T NBA Showcase Cup. They compete for a trophy and cash prizes over a few days at the tournament and get a fun audience in the bargain.
The second half of the season is more similar to the NBA, with 32 regular season games, and an East and West conference. Records are reset from the Showcase Cup and it’s a fresh start for the teams. Once the regular season ends, they enter playoffs, which are quite similar to the NBA’s. The top six teams in each conference compete in the G-League playoffs, which are broadcasted on YouTube TV.
It’s shaping up to be a very exciting season for the new Rip City Remix, and time will tell how far they make it in this first season. Their first game will be Friday, Nov. 17, versus the South Bay Lakers. Good luck Remix!
