Former Indiana Pacers guard Joe Young will be leaving the NBA. His next stop will be playing professional basketball in China.
NBA Free Agency is all but over. As July draws to a close, most teams have already signed everyone that is important for the construction of their roster, Including the Indiana Pacers.
Roster spots are hard to come by, and for players who have not yet signed NBA deals, it is becoming harder and harder by the day to find a landing spot. That is what is pushing a lot of players to go play overseas. Indiana Pacers guard Joe Young is one of those players who just wasn’t quite good enough to find a home.
Young has played for the Pacers for the past three seasons after being drafted by the team in the second round of the 2015 NBA draft. Back in June, the front office declined his team option, making him an unrestricted free agent and signaling to Young that they were not interested in retaining him any longer.
With the Pacers out of the equation and no other suitors for his services, Joe Young will join the crop of players headed overseas. According to a report from Mark Berman of Fox Sports 26 in Houston, Joe Young will take his talents to China:
Joseph Young (@JoeyBuckets3), former Yates High School star and @Pacers guard, finalizing a one-year, $1.3+ million contract to play in China for the Nanjing Tongxi Basketball club: "I'm taking my talent to China." pic.twitter.com/Pnr6EwrGZQ
— Mark Berman (@MarkBerman_) July 31, 2018
It should be noted that Joey Buckets is not the first Pacers player to head to China this summer. Al Jefferson joined the Xinjiang Flying Tigers earlier in the summer and now will be squaring off with Young in the Chinese basketball association next season.
Joe Young’s first two seasons with Indiana were rough, as he shot just 36.5 percent from the field over that span. But in his most recent season, he figured some stuff out, shooting 43 percent from the field and a tidy 38 percent from three-point range. He proved he could be a decent scorer, but he never materialized any other discernable NBA skills, and it became untenable to keep him on the roster any longer.
$1.3 million is still respectable money, and Joe Young just had a kid. Getting a payday overseas is a great move for him at this stage in his career and life. He never quite turned out to be a useful NBA player, but as fans, we can always remember how dominant Joe Young was in summer league. His time with the Indiana Pacers will not be forgotten soon, and we wish him well in his next chapter.