This piece comes less from a basketball sense and more from a personal one. When I joined the 8 Points, 9 Seconds staff, the first person I wrote about was Rienk Mast.
Now, it may seem stupid and less than professional to focus on a player who will likely never see NBA action in an Indiana Pacers jersey, but sports are supposed to be fun, and that's what this is all about: having fun, talking sports, and engaging with the fan side (get it, FanSided) of basketball.
Rienk Mast is an undersized center with defensive lapses who can also score, shoot, and rebound at a decent level. He showed those skills while being the Indiana Pacers' second-best player during all of summer league.
He is not excellent in any real sense of the game, but he can be useful.
Ironically, his best comparison is likely someone like Jay Huff, a shooter and slasher, who can rebound the ball and play capable backup minutes, but should not be relied on for any major roles.
The Pacers are going into next season with very little depth at their big man spot. While Ivica Zubac does not have a history of injury – in fact, he was one of the only Los Angeles Clippers players who would not get hurt for 35-odd games a season – it does remain true that Indiana has paper-thin depth behind him.
They have only the aforementioned Jay Huff and veteran big man Larry Nance Jr.
Nance, for his part, is likely not a playable option at this point in his career, and was brought in not to play but to guide the young players throughout the course of the season, as he has done in his many stops with the Portland Trail Blazers, Atlanta Hawks, New Orleans Pelicans, and Cleveland Cavaliers, which would leave the Pacers with only one real option to back up Zubac.
Now, while Pascal Siakam can play minutes as a small-ball center, and Obi Toppin can do the same at a smaller scale, it does remain intelligent to bring in another option.
Mast, despite being on a training camp deal, could be that break glass in case of emergency option.
The path to a real career is rough for Mast
Mast was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Indiana Pacers, coming out of Nebraska, where he was a decent player for many (very many) years. The Dutch big man won everything in the youth leagues in his home country before coming over to the U.S. for college, where he played for six – yes, six – seasons.
Now he is only 25 years old and could become a decent upside swing for the Pacers. More than likely, though, he will spend most of his season in the G League for the Noblesville Boom.
The Pacers' three two-way spots are already taken by Braden Smith, Kobe Brown, and Jalen Slawson, and Mast is surely not good enough to earn that final roster spot.
An Exhibit-10 deal makes some sense, but it would still leave Mast without any real NBA future.
It's hard to end a piece like this on such a sad note, but this doesn't mean it is the end of his career. Many undrafted players have found themselves carving out a career in the NBA.
If Mast were to do that, it would continue a wonderful tradition of Dutch players succeeding for the Indiana Pacers, and would be the first developmental success story the Pacers have had since Andrew Nembhard.
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