The average temperature in Sioux Falls, South Dakota during the NBA season is a frosty 34 degrees Fahrenheit.
It’s nothing like the 30-degree mornings in Denver which manage to turn to 60-degree afternoons and a far cry from the year-round sunshine that Torrey Craig had enjoyed for the last three seasons before signing a contract with the Nuggets to come stateside in 2017. It’s real cold. Bone-chilling cold. The type of cold that hits you square in the face every morning when you step outside.
“It’s definitely one of the coldest places I’ve ever been in my life,” Craig told BSN Denver. “Even when it doesn’t snow, it’s just cold. The wind chill, man. It’s just cold. That’s the one thing I hated the most.”
But Sioux Falls’ frosty conditions proved to be Craig’s basketball haven. The secluded environment free from distractions allowed Craig to focus entirely on his game while in the G League. When he was intermittently called up to the Nuggets throughout his rookie year, Craig contributed. Two years later, he’s a valued member of Denver’s nightly rotation.
The Nuggets are hoping that Bol Bol — the 44th overall pick in this year’s draft who the team signed to a two-way contract last week — follows in Craig’s footsteps.
Once projected as a top-10 pick, Bol’s draft stock plummeted after a foot injury ended his freshman season at Oregon after only nine games. Off the court concerns reportedly scared teams off as well. Bol sunk all the way to the second round where Denver eagerly traded into the draft to grab the intriguing center prospect.
The reasons why the Nuggets were so enthusiastic about their draft night haul were obvious.
At 7-foot-2 with an effortless 3-point stroke, Bol is a basketball unicorn. He’ll be the third-tallest player in the league next season after 7-foot-6 Tacko Fall and 7-foot-3 Boban Marjanovic but shot 52% from 3 in college on nearly three attempts per game.
He glides up the floor like a guard and has dribble moves in his arsenal that seven-footers never dream of developing. Bol also possesses great touch around the rim and can shut down the entire paint with his 7-foot-8 wingspan.
“When you get a guy with the tools like Bol Bol, it’s hard not to be aggressive,” Nuggets president of basketball operations Tim Connelly said after the draft “It’s hard not to be excited.”
Bol is another long-term play from the Nuggets following in the footsteps of 2018 selections Michael Porter Jr. and Jarred Vanderbilt, who both dropped in the draft due to injuries. Like Porter and Vanderbilt, he’s not expected to contribute to the Nuggets during his rookie season and with one of the deepest rosters in the league, Denver won’t need him to.
Bol’s rookie campaign will be all about development. On a two-way contract, he will be allotted 45 days to spend with the Nuggets next season and some of his year will be spent in the G League. Denver can convert Bol’s contract to regular NBA deal during the season as long as the Nuggets have an open roster spot, which they currently do.
He’s also the latest entrant into the Nuggets’ successful player development program, something Denver has managed to build as just one of two NBA franchises without a G League affiliate. Recent graduates include Craig, Monte Morris, who spent his rookie season with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers and Malik Beasley, who also played for Sioux Falls during his rookie season before emerging last year as an integral piece to Denver’s lineup.
Like Craig, Morris and Beasley, just how much Bol develops his game and body while at the NBA’s Triple-A level will be on him.
“Some guys don’t like being in the G League because they feel like they deserve to be on an NBA team. I didn’t look at it that way,” Craig said. “I just looked at it at another opportunity to showcase what I can do. I embraced the challenge of being in the G League.”
Bol will be hundreds if not thousands of miles away from Denver while in the G League but the Nuggets will help him feel as close to home as possible. Craig said postgame calls and texts from Nuggets personnel helped him stay connected to the organization while in South Dakota.
Denver will do the same with Bol and want to take it slow with the rookie who didn’t participate at Summer League and hasn’t played in a game in nine months. But Bol is fully healthy and has impressed in open gyms this offseason with his shooting stroke and instinctive skill-set.
“He’s just a natural talent,” Craig said. “Everything is effortless to him because he’s so skilled and so long and tall. To be able to shoot it like he can for his size is pretty impressive. You can just watch him workout and tell that he’s just a natural talent.”
Like any player on assignment, Bol’s work ethic will be tested and the Nuggets will learn a lot about their latest draft pick — as they did about Craig, Morris and Beasley — from how he approaches his G League minutes.
The onus will be on Bol to develop his game next season and begin to grow into his lofty ceiling.
The ball is fully in his court.
“I just wanted to make sure every time that I came back and I got called up from the G League that I was ready and I came back better,” Craig said. “I think if Bol goes gown there with that mindset, he’s obviously a talent so he can dominate the G League, but he just has to embrace it and everything else will speak for itself.”
