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Gonzaga eyes a dynamic backcourt shakeup as Oregon’s Jackson Shelstad emerges as a top transfer portal target. Could Mark Few’s signature two–point guard lineup see Shelstad join Mario Saint-Supéry next season, reigniting the Zags’ tradition of high-octane guard play? Andy Patton explores Shelstad’s proven scoring, 3-point shooting, and fit alongside Saint-Supéry, while sizing up strong competition from UCLA and Arizona for the electric West Linn standout.
The episode also launches the Zags’ season review series, spotlighting senior guard Adam Miller’s lone season in Spokane. Did Miller meet expectations as the Bulldogs’ designated sharpshooter, or did his struggles from deep alter Gonzaga’s postseason fortunes? Andy Patton assesses Miller’s legacy, defensive growth, and professional future, and previews the roster moves looming this offseason. Keep up with Gonzaga’s evolving roster strategy and transfer portal buzz as the team sets its sights on next year’s dominance.
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Mark few loves two-point guard lineups and he loves Oregon Guard Jackson's Shell Stad
and that could be a match made in heaven for Gonzaga next season.
You are Lockdown Zags, your daily podcast on the Gonzaga Bulldogs.
Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day.
What is going on?
Welcome into the Lockdown Zags Podcast.
I am your host and longtime Gonzaga podcaster Andy Patton here to bring you news and updates
on all things Zag Athletics.
Well we got our season in review series officially kicking off.
Today we are talking about senior guard Adam Miller and his contributions to Gonzaga in
his first and lone season playing for the Zags in Spokane.
We will get to that in the second and third segments.
But we are also kicking off what is not really a series but what will be a recurring theme
on the podcast over the next two to maybe three months.
Which is looking at transfer portal targets for Gonzaga whether they are players that
we think Gonzaga should target whether they are players that have been connected to Gonzaga
either directly or indirectly whatever it may be.
The transfer portal does not officially open until April 7th.
So we are a ways away from that even being something that we can really discuss fully.
But there have been a handful of players who have already made their intentions very clear
that they are entering the transfer portal.
And I'm not going to talk about anybody until they have done that because again, just
a speculation of like, oh, we would really love this player if they haven't said anything
if they haven't made an indication like it just, there are thousands of players that
are going to be in the transfer portal.
We don't need to talk about guys who aren't there yet.
But a player who has made it quite clear already posted his good bye message already said
he is planning to enter the portal is Oregon point guard Jackson Shell Stad and that's
the direction we are going to go here.
Shell Stad, six foot senior guard entering his final season of eligibility most likely from
Westlin, Oregon.
I say that because he only played 12 games this past year and does sound like he is going
to pursue a medical hardship waiver and he might get it.
There is an opportunity he played 12 games, he was hurt before the season and ended up
not playing after December 28th again, that's going to be kind of a 50-50 shot there.
But whether he gets that season or not, he will have at least one more year because that
was his junior year this past year at Oregon.
He spent all three of these seasons with the Oregon Ducks.
I was a top 25 recruit in the 2023 recruiting class joined as part of a, well, look like
a potentially transformative recruiting class for Dana Altman and the Ducks.
You had Jackson, Shell Stad, you had Kwame Evans, you had Mookie Cook, Shell Stad is entered
the portal or will enter the portal Kwame Evans, intended to stand in the portal after
his junior year, Mookie Cook spent this past year at San Francisco, not a class that worked
out very well for that club in Eugene.
But Shell Stad was fantastic really in all three years, like two and a half years that
he played at Oregon.
As a true freshman, he averaged about 13.3 assists, shot 34 and a half percent from three,
that was on four and a half attempts per game, he was all Pac-12 freshman team, he was also
named to the all Pac-12 tournament team, and everybody on the planet, we set it on Lockdown
College Basketball on the national show, everybody you have ever paid attention to who covers
college basketball nationally, projected Jackson, Shell Stad as a breakout star as a sophomore
in the 24-25 season.
And pretty much everybody was right, his numbers didn't explode way higher than they were
as a freshman, but he went from averaging about 12.8 points to 13.7 points, his assists
stayed pretty consistent, 2.7 assists, but he also looked like an outstanding three point
shooter shot, 38 percent from three as a sophomore on five attempts per game, that's a high
volume and a very high percentage, he was named to the third team all Big 10, which in the
Big 10, especially the Big 10, when Oregon joined, is loaded with guards, so to be an all
Big 10 caliber guard is a very, very high compliment, I mean, he was a named to the pre-season
Naysmith award watch list, obviously did not win the Naysmith award, but still being
named to that watch list is a very promising sign and just a sign of respect for how good
he was as a freshman and obviously being able to deliver on that for his sophomore year.
That led into his junior year, this past season, where he was also, again, named to the Naysmith
award, a pre-season watch list, he was also named to the Wooden award, pre-season watch list,
so people who cover this sport projected him as a top 50 player in the country, a player
capable of contending for the highest individual honor you can get in college basketball.
And again, he only played 12 games, so it's not surprising, he was not on any of this
list, he basically, he played very few regular season, Big 10 games for Oregon this year.
But when he was on the floor, he was very good.
He averaged 15 and a half points per game.
He's a cis numbers rocket it up to five per game, again, he'd been under three per game
in his first two years, that was up to 4.9 in those 12 games as a junior, he also averaged
one and a half steals per game, now his three point rate dropped, 31.5%.
And I know because of what happened with the player, we're going to spend the rest of
the show talking about Adam Miller, there will be concern about a player who had previously
shot well that did not shoot well in his last years, kind of the inverse of Miller who
had shot recently, previously in his career, but then shot really well the year before
he got to Gonzaga.
Now, I want to say a couple of things, a 12 game sample size is small, that applies to
some of the other numbers, like the cis numbers being way higher is maybe something that you
don't bank on because it was a half of a season, not even the steel numbers, again, 1.4
steals compared to 0.7 steals as a sophomore is like a difference of like two or three extra
steals basically because of the sample size, but he also shot nearly nine three pointers
per game.
That is a massive volume.
Your percentage dropping because you are shooting nine threes per game in a 12 game sample
size with a hurt hand, this was not a lower leg injury, this was a broken hand was the
injury that cost him time and he suffered the injury early in like the preseason was dealing
with the injury throughout his 12 games and then re-injured it and was shot down for the
rest of the year.
That confluence of factors makes me entirely unconcerned about a 31 and a half percent
three point rating.
I'm not saying that means she'll start going to be a 40 percent shooter next year wherever
he plays.
Again, he was 38 percent as a sophomore, 35 percent as a freshman.
But I'm also not saying that he's going to be 31 or lower than 32 because of what he
did in a 12 game sample size as a junior.
He is a very good three point shooter.
He is a tough shot maker.
He has demonstrated that consistently throughout his career.
He can go get a bucket.
He is a dynamic offensive player.
The facilitation skills, you know, maybe not always there, but he showed some really strong
performances this last year, 21 points on five of nine shooting from three against San
Diego State, 21 points, nine assists, four of nine from three against UCLA against Gonzaga.
He didn't have his greatest shooting performance.
That was his second to last game of the year, 12 points, four assists, shot two of nine from
three.
And again, the injury limited him throughout the season before he was ultimately shot
down and did not play the second half of the 25-26 season for a Oregon team mind you
that was just absolutely terrible last year.
Expected interest, obviously, again, without the portal being open, you're not going to
get your tweets from your Sam Cazers and your Eric Bosses and all the other people, Dishon
London, Joe Tipton, whomever it may be that tweets out the, you know, this school has
told me that he's received interest from and then it's a list of 5, 10, 25 different schools
that I've showed interest.
We're not going to see those for a while.
We're going to have plenty of those tweets read out on the show over the next few months,
but not for a couple of weeks.
However, some schools we can project assume, speculate will be interested in Jackson
Shell Stead, obviously, Gonzaga.
Part of the reason here is that when Shell Stead committed to Oregon out of Westland
high school as a top 25 recruit in the 2023 class, he picked Oregon out of a top three
that also included UCLA and Gonzaga.
So we're going to project that both UCLA and Gonzaga will be in the mix here.
Also as I alluded to in the cold open, Jackson Shell Stead is a player that Mark Few has
a lot of respect for.
And while I don't think that Mark Few, I put in my notes like Mark Few's playing chess,
everybody else is playing checkers like, I don't think that Mark Few making comments
praising Jackson Shell Stead before the Oregon game in December had anything to do with
like, oh, maybe he'll enter the transfer portal.
I don't think Mark Few's thinking about that.
I don't think that that is, yeah, he was asked about Oregon because they were preparing
for the game against Oregon and he complimented Jackson Shell Stead.
Now I noted at the time on the show and in an article for Sports Illustrated that it
is rare for Few to call out opposing teams players by name.
He does not do this very often.
He will often say something like, they have a really good guard.
Their big man has grown exponentially, whatever it may be.
He mentions, same areas players by name a lot because I think he has a lot of respect
for Randy Bennett and also I think they scout them a lot.
He mentioned Rouskis by name.
He mentioned Joshua Dent by name this year.
Another player that he mentioned by name was Jackson Shell Stead.
And he said very, I mean, very direct quote, I think he's going to be a pro.
I think he's going to be an NBA player.
That is very high praise for Mark Few for Jackson Shell Stead.
And whether he did that intentionally or not, again, I don't think that he was thinking
about, you know, next year's roster in December, but it probably didn't hurt.
It doesn't hurt that Jackson Shell Stead is going to be looking for his next school.
And if Gonzaga comes calling, he's going to know that that quote happened.
He's going to know that Mark Few thinks he's an NBA player.
That's a pretty darn good feeling when you're looking for your next place to play basketball.
UCLA makes sense because Donovan Dent is out the door.
They need a new point guard.
Jackson Shell Stead is a guy that was already interested in McCrone and UCLA's program.
So you got to consider that as a candidate here.
John Kanzano, who reports on the Pac-12, New and Old Pac-12,
has wrote an article about Jackson Shell Stead's departure and mentioned Arizona very specifically
and said he is under the impression that Arizona will be interested.
That also makes sense.
He is a very Tommy Lloyd-esque guard, which makes him a Mark Few-esque guard in a lot of ways as well.
And Arizona will be without Jayden Bradley.
Their starting point guard right now is they get into their sweet 16 here today.
And Jayden Bradley is a senior.
So he's going to be out the door after this year.
Their other guard, Braden Burries, is going to be out the door as well as a one-and-done freshman.
So they have a lot of holes to fill in the back court.
Shell Stead would make sense for Arizona.
USC, I think, could make some sense for Coach Musselman.
Alabama makes some sense with Phylon out the door.
LaTrell Wright-Sell used to neglect graduating.
They love three-point shooters.
They love gunners.
Louisville potentially also likes three-point shooters.
Michael Brown Jr. is going to be a one-and-done player.
So there's plenty of schools that could be invested here.
But I would think Gonzaga, UCLA, Arizona,
potentially USC, maybe a few others in the mix here,
just kind of as a speculation at this point.
Now, the fit for him at Gonzaga.
Mark Fu loves two-point guard lineups.
The two best teams that Gonzaga has ever had in 2017 and 2021,
were both starting lineups that featured a pair of point guards.
In 2017, it was Josh Perkins and Nigel Williams-Gas.
In 2021, it was Jaylen Suggs and Andrew Nimhart.
In 2026-27, it could very much be Jackson-Shellstad and Mario St. Superior.
Now, we're not going to compare it to those two backwards.
Those two backwards were a little bit bigger.
I think that's the biggest concern that people are going to have right now,
is that Shellstad is six-foot.
And Mario's six-three, but he's not particularly big six-three.
And Suggs and Nimhart were six-four and six-five, six-three and six-four,
or something like that.
Nigel Williams-Gas and Josh Perkins was a little bit undersized,
but it was still a little bigger than this.
And the rest of that roster was absolute nails, defensively,
really good defensive team for Gonzaga at that time.
A unit of Mario and Jackson would include great three-point shooting,
with Mario shooting 40 percent last year with Jackson being a consistent good three-point
shooter who should get more open looks in Gonzaga's offense than he did at Oregon last year.
And it features good playmaking for both guards.
I think you would probably have Mario play on the ball a little bit more because he's a better
passer than Jackson, but Jackson would be your secondary creator and a great three-point shooter,
who, you know, again, Gonzaga's offense.
The reason he loves two-point guards is because you can kind of rotate who has the ball
and still be able to attack and get into your offense and initiate with both those guards
on the floor at the same time.
It is a tad limiting defensively.
Neither of these players are, like, actively bad defensively,
but they're limited by their size, Jackson in particular.
And so that would be a challenge for this team.
It would be a better scoring combo than the Ryan Nempartner and Nolan Hickman group,
but would not be as good facilitating-wise because Ryan Nempartner is one of the best passers
in college basketball history.
And I don't know that it would be dramatically better defensively,
so you'd need a manual in a Chente.
You'd need Davis Vogel to step up defensively.
You'd need to get some more defense out of the transfer portal,
ideally a rim-protecting big who can help mask some of the mistakes that this back court
would make defensively on the floor.
But Shellstad plays with pace.
He plays with confidence.
He's a veteran.
I think there's a lot to really like about this.
Is he the absolute perfect fit for Gonzaga?
Not necessarily.
But I think that if that's who you get, if you go after him,
it's a really, really fun addition and a really fun combination between him and Mario.
It probably spells the end of Raiden Smith's tenure at Gonzaga,
because you just don't need a third peer point guard.
On the roster, but Shellstad is the kind of player you go out and pursue
and see if you can make it work because he brings a lot to this roster that Gonzaga really needs.
Well, we're going to start our season review series talking about kind of the player that
Shellstad and the theory would replace on the roster.
And that would be Senior Guard Adam Miller.
Didn't quite meet expectations for Gonzaga this season.
We're going to talk about why that was and what impact he did have coming up here in just a second.
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All right, folks, season review series.
We're doing this for the fourth fourth year in a row.
I believe that it is.
We do a season preview series.
So those of you who are back with us in September and October as we were
getting through those shows, we pick every player on the roster.
We do a full show dedicated to them.
We talk about their history.
How they ended up in Spokane where they were accrued transfer,
international.
How did they get here?
What did they do previously in their career?
And then we talk about their best and worst case scenarios for the upcoming season.
And then we close it out kind of giving our expected role,
expected production future from there.
And then at the end of the season, we review.
How did their year go?
And then what is the future from here?
Are they coming back to Gonzaga?
Are they entering the transfer portal?
Are they going professional?
And then we kind of will talk legacy a little bit.
What did they leave behind if they are, of course, a player who is departing the program for good?
Like Adam Miller.
We're going to talk about Adam Miller here.
Adam Miller's history is a top 30 recruit in the 2020 class.
Way back in the 2020 class,
started his career at Illinois as he is from the state of Illinois in the 2021 season.
So he is one of the last remaining COVID kids still in college basketball,
because that year did not officially count against Adam Miller's eligibility.
He played well at Illinois average about eight points a game.
Then red shirt at the 21-22 season.
After the year, he transferred to LSU, but he did not play.
He was injured.
He ended up just taking the year off.
So he got a red shirt year there.
So neither of his first two years playing college basketball,
officially counted against his eligibility.
He then played at LSU for the 22-23 season.
Was productive in the SEC for the Tigers.
And then hit the portal again.
In this time landed in the PAC-12.
He spent his first year in the big time with Illinois.
He spent his next year playing at LSU in the SEC.
Then spent the next year at Arizona State,
who was then in the PAC-12.
And that was in the 23-24 season.
State at Arizona State for the final year,
which was of course the program's first year in the big 12 in the 24-25 season.
So he has been all over the map.
Been at three different schools.
Been in four different conferences.
Before entering the transfer portal again,
for his final year of eligibility in 25-26.
Throughout his career, coming into Spokane, coming into Gonzaga.
The average just over 10 points per game in about 30 minutes a game.
He had shot 34.3% from three on five and a half attempts per game.
And that was across 117 career games.
So Adam Miller arrived in Spokane.
He hit the portal, he committed to Gonzaga.
He was the first transfer portal addition for Gonzaga.
One of just two, as they also landed Ty and Grant Foster.
Jalen Morley had committed to Gonzaga and spent the previous year
as a student at Gonzaga and Red Shirting.
Braden Smith obviously have been Red Shirting as well.
So the only two players in last year's portal class were Miller and Ty and Grant Foster.
So Miller, he commits to Gonzaga, he ends up here.
And he came to Spokane having shot over 34% from three in 117 career games.
And on five and a half attempts per game.
So he was a good three point shooter.
Not a great three point shooter, but a good one.
He shot 34% at Illinois.
He shot 43% in his final year at Arizona State.
But in the two middle years, his first year at LSU, his first year at Arizona State,
he was not a very good three point shooter.
And there was consternation.
There was concern that Gonzaga's two primary three point specialists on the roster.
One of them was Steel Ventors who was coming off of two injuries.
And the other one was Adam Miller who had not necessarily always shown consistency
as a three point shooter.
And since he was expected to fill the Nolan Hickman role as a starting two guard,
who, I mean, Hickman for all of the faults that many people like to point out about Nolan Hickman,
he was a darn good three point shooter.
Like he maybe didn't contribute a ton of other things, but that he did knock down 44%
absolute sniper from beyond the arc.
Gonzaga would have been pretty darn happy if they got that, even if they didn't get anything else
from Adam Miller. Unfortunately, they did not.
He never, he never quite filled the role.
He had his moments.
And I think he did some things well that maybe weren't things we even really expected from him necessarily.
I think he was a better defensive player than many people, including myself, would have projected.
He threw his body on the line.
He took charges.
He was aggressive going after steels, got right up into people's bodies.
Not something that he was necessarily known that much for.
I think some of his advanced defensive numbers were a little bit,
maybe weren't as
representative of who he was as a player because your team defense matters a lot.
And there's a lot of state.
It was not a very good defensive team when he was there.
So it made him look like a worse defender than I think he actually was.
But all told, Miller finishes his one season in Spokane starting 25 out of 35 games.
He was one of a few players in the roster who played every single game for Gonzaga.
He played 19 and a half minutes per game.
Average a little over seven points, one and a half boards and one assists.
He shot just under 60% on two point attempts about two and a half of those per game.
But he shot just 30.2.
Not 32, 30.2% from three on 3.7 attempts per game.
He's also 75% from the free throw line.
Kind of running through how his season went in Spokane kind of chunking it out a little bit.
He started seven of Gonzaga's first eight games.
He did not start the first game of the year and then he started the next seven.
So that was through Gonzaga's loss to Michigan at that time.
He was averaging nine and a half points and shooting basically what he shot all year,
30.8% from three.
He then slid to the bench.
His playing time dropped as he was now coming off the bench.
But his production increased over the next nine games.
He averaged just six points per game.
But he shot 48% from three.
A lot of this was the weaker part of Gonzaga schedule.
They had Kentucky was in here.
UCLA was in here, but you also had like the Campbell game was in here.
The North Florida game was in here.
That first couple of games of the WCC regular season.
We're in here, which were not particularly great opponents.
So that is part of it.
But still he shot 48% from three in a nine game sample while coming off the bench.
He then started the rest of the season.
Re-entered the starting lineup, started the rest of the year for the next 14 games,
which is from there until the end of the regular season.
Miller averaged about eight points, played 21 and a half minutes per game.
But was abysmal from three.
23.2% from three.
And as this is going to come up in every single season review show that we do,
I guarantee it, a big part of this correlated with the injury to Braden Hut.
I am basically going to look at every player's stats before and after Huff got hurt
because every single one of them will be impacted.
And you might be thinking Adam Miller seems like the least likely player
to have been impacted by the Braden Huff injury.
He's not on the floor to get assists.
He is not on the floor.
You know, like it doesn't really seem like that would impact him.
But Gonzaga's entire three-point shooting offense cratered when Huff went down with his injury
because teams were able, when the both bids were on the floor,
they had a hard time defending threes.
Both those bids were very capable of passing out to threes.
You've got a lot of open looks on passes coming from the paint.
Passes coming straight to your chest from Graham UK or Braden Huff.
Easy to catch and shoot.
When the offense changed, a lot of the time the offense was then predicated on shooting threes
either off the dribble or shooting threes on passes from the wing swinging around
because the ball was having a harder time getting down low.
Those are cover shots to make and while you'd expect your shooters to still be able to knock
them down, they were not able to.
And Miller struggled mightily down the stretch as a three-point shooter.
Now he had some good games.
His best with the season came during this stretch.
That was against Santa Clara at Santa Clara, a game Gonzaga needed to win.
21 points on six of nine shooting.
He was also seven of eight from the free throw line.
He scored like Gonzaga's last, I think he scored like
their last 12 points in that game or like 14 of the last 15.
Some insane stat where he was like basically Gonzaga's entire offense in the final three minutes
of that game.
Really big performance for him.
That was on Valentine's Day.
But again, then you get into the playoffs.
The two WCC tournament games, the two NCAA tournament games.
You didn't get much from Miller there.
Seven points in four assists against Oregon State.
And then in the final three games,
see I just six total points, two in each of those three games.
Shot one of seven from three in those final four games.
While I still maintain that Miller did some good things
and I think his leadership was important, his ability to work hard defensively and throw
his body on the line was good.
He found a little rhythm with that floater in the lane that he started using in the last
like 10 games of the season.
But ultimately, there was a key thing that Adam Miller was brought onto this roster to do.
And frankly, he wasn't able to deliver.
And it's hard to not consider that a disappointing season for Miller and for Gonzaga.
Because again, when they needed that, when they needed that offensive punch
with not on the floor, they didn't get it.
In fact, they got probably one of the worst shooting stretches of his entire career.
And that was a pretty big problem for Gonzaga down the stretch.
So what's next for Adam Miller?
Where does he go from here?
What legacy does he leave behind in his lone season in Spokane?
How will he be remembered?
We're going to talk about that to close out the show.
Come on up here in just a second.
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All right folks,
segment three.
Still any patents?
Still locked on Zag's podcast.
Still part of the Lockdown podcast network.
Now the number one sports podcasting network.
And we are finishing up our first season in review
episode of the off season,
talking about senior guard Adam Miller,
who wrapped up his first and final season in Spokane
as a member of Deconzaga Bulldogs.
And we're going to take a look at his future,
his legacy,
after his final season here in Spokane.
Future is pretty simple for Adam Miller.
He does not have any more eligibility.
And in an era where there's always people wondering,
there's always people questioning,
there's always people making the snide comment of like,
oh yeah, but you know, who knows if like,
yeah, Adam Miller is done.
Like, he is played 152 career games,
which is a huge amount of professional games,
or professional of college games,
to have played at the division one level.
He has done that over five seasons
because the COVID year was one of them.
It made sense that he got last year of eligibility
because he played the COVID year,
then he read shirt of the next year,
and then he played the next three years after that.
So COVID year not counting means that those three years
plus this Gonzaga year are his four seasons of eligibility.
But because he read shirt of that one year,
because he's already played his four full years,
and not getting another year.
It's not happening for Adam Miller.
He's not, I don't think, pursuing it.
I mean, we'll see.
You never know if players are going to pursue
an additional year, at least attempt to do so.
But there's no real argument here for Miller.
He's also been in college for six years.
So he's passed the five year window,
having already played the COVID year,
having already been granted an extra year.
Adam Miller's collegiate career has come to a close
in that game against Texas in the round of 32.
He's looking ahead for what's next for Adam Miller.
We always take a look at kind of the NBA future
for everybody on the roster.
Is there a chance?
What does that look like?
There's not really for Adam Miller.
Like as much as I want to see every player
from Gonzaga succeed in some capacity,
and he will certainly have a professional career,
there is not a real path for a six foot three non-shooting,
non-point guard to make the NBA.
We already kind of drawn the comparisons a little bit
to Nolan Hickman, who was also a senior,
who left Gonzaga, who was also a six foot three non-point guard
who played primarily off the ball during his career.
But Hickman was a more skilled facilitator than Adam Miller.
He had some experience playing point guard in his career.
And while he was not great at it,
he did demonstrate the ability to break down a defense,
distribute the ball.
Adam Miller never played point guard in his career.
Never average more than I think two assists per game.
And he wasn't asked to do that in failing.
He just never asked to do that.
But Nolan Hickman was also a knockdown lights out three point shooter.
Adam Miller was only that for one year,
and that was his second to last season at Arizona State.
He played who finishes career shooting under 35% from three,
who does not distribute the ball who is six foot three,
does not have a path to the NBA.
You would have to be the best defensive player
at that size on the planet to make the NBA.
Ludor is a little bit bigger than that, I think.
That's what you'd have to be.
Adam Miller is not that.
I suspect, like most seniors, especially seniors who come from Gonzaga,
especially a player with his pedigree who played at the power conference level,
who was a high ranking high school recruit,
I expect he will get some level of attention.
He will not get drafted.
I would bet all the money that I make from the show that he's not going to get drafted.
But I think he'll get invited to the Portsmouth Invitational,
which is not the NBA draft combine.
It's not the G-league combine.
Those are both separate events.
It is kind of the third wave.
It is for seniors who are out of eligibility.
Nolan Hickman played at Portsmouth.
Caleb Battle played at Portsmouth.
Many other Gonzaga players have played at Portsmouth.
It's a nice way to showcase your skill.
Some players get invited from Portsmouth to the G-league combine.
Players have gotten invited from Portsmouth to G-league to the NBA draft combine.
We have seen that happen before.
So does the way to showcase your skill and potentially get some extra attention.
And I do think that Miller will get that invite.
And we will track how he does at that event when it comes around in early June.
And I think he'll get a summer league invite.
Like I think a team will roster him in the summer league.
The same way they did with Hickman and Ben Greg and all those guys who were seniors last year.
But I don't think he's going to get a super realistic look as an NBA player.
So from there, it will be, does he want to stay in the G-league and play at that level,
but not with an NBA contract?
Which if you do that, you just not make a lot of money.
There are a lot of guys playing in the G-league that are, you know,
you're a professional basketball player in the United States.
That's a very cool thing that you get to do.
But the salary is not there.
And if you're a two-way guy or you have an NBA contract,
those guys make good money.
But everybody else doesn't really.
Not at least compared to the money that you can make overseas.
And that's what I think ultimately Adam Miller ends up.
You go play an Italy-like hill of battles doing right now.
You go play again in somewhere in Europe.
Whether you're playing in Spain or Italy or Germany or wherever.
There's also Asian leagues, Japan, China.
There's a whole lot of professional basketball being played outside of the United States.
And a lot of money to be made at some of those higher levels.
And I think Adam Miller is good enough to play at a high level.
And Caleb Faddle, you follow him on Instagram,
still he's playing in Italy.
He's playing in front of huge packed crowds, packed houses.
It looks fantastic and fun.
He's playing well.
I don't know the details of his contract,
but making more money than he'd be making as a non-MBA roster to play in the G-league.
So that way I expect ultimately Adam Miller to end them.
And in terms of his legacy in Spokane, again,
I kind of teased it in the teaser of like,
how will he be remembered?
And honestly, he's not going to be a player that I think is all that remembered.
And that really feels like a mean thing to say.
But because this team failed to meet expectations,
because he did not play the role that was expected of him,
we've seen so many great one-year kind of mercenary transfers for Gonzaga,
the Jordan Matthews, Byron Wesley's.
You know, those are two of the best examples.
I always want to say, Racer Bolton, he was technically here for two years.
Malachi Smith is a good example for that as well.
And I don't think he's going to be quite on that level.
Maybe he's a little bit more like Caleb Battle,
although I think he'll be a little bit more remembered,
because he was kind of an exciting electric player in a lot of ways.
I think TimeGrat Foster is more comparable to Battle.
It's going to be a little bit more like a Geno Crandall or an Aaron Cook,
where they were a good decent player,
but didn't play huge minutes,
which Miller started, but he didn't play huge minutes,
and maybe he didn't profoundly impact the team in a significant way.
That's going to wrap it up for me today, folks, here on The Locked on Zach's podcast.
Thank you so much for making the show your first listener watch of the day.
We're going to have a lot more content just like this,
where we're talking season review episodes.
We're also talking transfer portal potential additions,
all those conversations coming up here in the next couple of weeks.
Thanks again, folks.
Have a fantastic rest of your day.
And of course, as always, go Zachs.
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Locked On Zags - Daily Podcast On Gonzaga Bulldogs Basketball

Locked On Zags - Daily Podcast On Gonzaga Bulldogs Basketball

Locked On Zags - Daily Podcast On Gonzaga Bulldogs Basketball
