It was Monday, October 25, less than forty-eight hours after the G League Draft, and the entire Squadron organization had gathered in the Skylight Lounge at the Lumen Apartments in downtown Birmingham. This was the team’s first official meeting, and the staff sought to set a clear foundation for the season. Associate general manager Billy Campbell helped to break the ice.
“How many people in this room want to make it to the NBA?” he asked the group. Everyone raised a hand. Not just the thirteen players—everyone. Gilchrist Schmidt, head athletic trainer, raised his hand. Dillon McGowan, basketball operations associate and equipment manager, raised his hand. Mery Andrade, assistant coach and former WNBA player, raised her hand. Every single member of the Squadron organization for the 2021–22 season, Campbell highlighted, shared the exact same goal.
“And who is willing to make the necessary sacrifices to make it to the NBA?” Campbell followed up. Once again, everyone raised a hand.
“Okay, so, everyone in this room is now willing to be held to the standards required and do the things that we feel can help get you to the NBA.”
If anyone knew the standards required to get there, it was Campbell. A veteran in the business, he had worked with the NBA’s Washington Wizards as a basketball operations assistant and coaches’ assistant for four years (2006–10), as well as with the main G League office (2012–16). He had seen many guys make it and many more squander their opportunities. Now it was his job to ensure that Squadron players didn’t do the latter.
Associate head coach T. J. Saint, who had previously served as a video coordinator for the NBA’s Detroit Pistons (2014–18), addressed the team next. The main focus of his speech was establishing a Squadron identity. He opened with a short PowerPoint slide that posed three questions, written in all caps:
Saint then underscored a quote from Chinese general Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War: “Every battle is won before it’s ever fought.”
On the court, part of the Squadron identity would be a hard-nosed, disciplined, physical defense. Saint, the team’s defensive coordinator, outlined his expectations. Certain lapses, he explained, would result in an automatic substitution, such as not sprinting back to protect the paint and failing to contest shots. These were his nonnegotiables. Mess up, sit down—end of discussion.
Pannone, who would lead the offense, spoke after Saint and began by going through a long list of team standards, all essential to building the Squadron’s desired identity:
A majority of the rules were applicable to any team at any level of basketball. Some were more G League-specific: not making excuses in a league full of them, shedding all egos, embracing the “suckiness,” changing one’s mindset from “I have to” to “I get to”:
Pannone recognized that an integral part of his job was teaching his players how to be professionals. Those who came from top college programs were used to a comfortable lifestyle. Big staffs catered to their every need. Facilities were top notch. Teams flew private, stayed in five-star hotels, ate gourmet food, had police escorts. Any young adult entering the real world has a lot to learn, but the transition from a powerhouse university like Kentucky or Duke to the G League can be especially jarring.
In 2010 Grizzlies seven-footer Hasheem Thabeet was assigned to the D-League’s Dakota Wizards. As the former number two overall pick out of the University of Connecticut (UConn), he was the highest draft pick ever sent to the minors by an NBA team. During one road trip, the Wizards were getting ready to play a game when the twenty-three-year-old Thabeet realized he didn’t have his shoes—they had been left at the previous stop on their trip. At UConn, as with the Grizzlies, someone on staff packed up all the shoes, usually bringing multiple options for each player. With the Dakota Wizards, players were responsible for their own belongings. It would have been easy enough for Thabeet to borrow shoes or hustle to a local mall, except that he wore a whopping size 18. There was no way, under the time constraints, that the team was going to be able to find a pair that big. So Thabeet had to miss the Wizards’ next game. Reason—no shoes. Since the D-League attracted so little media attention, his absence was able to fly under the radar.
That type of stuff just happened in the minors—players forgot things, showed up late, missed buses, acted immaturely, made foolish mistakes on the court. In 2015 Iowa Energy teammates Jarnell Stokes and Kalin Lucas were both ejected from a game for fighting . . . each other. Lucas was, according to announcers on the broadcast, “bloodied up a little bit” by Stokes. A year later, Houston Rockets forward Montrezl Harrell was on assignment with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers when he pushed a referee to the ground during an altercation. He was subsequently suspended for five games. The G League was where such behavior was corralled. Like any first job, it was where a bunch of twentysomethings learned to grow up. And those who didn’t, didn’t make it.
Longtime D-Leaguer Mo Charlo remembered when big man Hassan Whiteside got assigned to his team—the Reno Bighorns—from the Sacramento Kings during the 2010–11 season. Whiteside thought he was above it, not buying in or listening to Reno’s head coach Eric Musselman (now the head coach at the University of Arkansas). After practice ended, Musselman put a single chair in the middle of the locker room and told everyone to leave except Whiteside. Charlo stayed close to the door and listened as Musselman ripped into his seven-foot center. “He just went crazy,” Charlo recalled with a laugh. “I was in there cracking up, like, Oh, shit! That was kind of the wake-up call that I think Hassan needed.” Whiteside would learn to mature, eventually earning a four-year, $98 million max contract from the Miami Heat.
To ensure accountability as Musselman did, the Squadron imposed fines for various slipups. Pannone ran through the catalog of infractions. Being late to a team function would cost a player $50; failing to promptly report an injury, illness, or condition—$100; missing player programs—$250; displaying improper bench conduct or team insubordination—up to $500; suspension—2 percent of a player’s salary. Considering standard G League contracts were valued at just $37,000 for the 2021–22 season, those penalties weren’t as trivial as they sound. When NBA superstars doled out $25,000 or $50,000 for an offense, they were actually relinquishing a smaller percentage of their paychecks than a G Leaguer coughing up a fifty-dollar bill.
With those particulars out of the way, Pannone detailed his offense. More than anything, it was a system predicated on unselfishness. In Pannone’s mind, being unselfish was the best way to win basketball games and to impress scouts. There were other key elements to his system, many of which were based on analytics (pushing the pace, not settling for midrange shots, attacking the rim, making the extra pass). Selfishness, though, would cause the entire machine to break down. And besides, NBA coaches weren’t looking for ball-dominant, one-on-one players, Pannone assured his team. They already had those guys.
The numbers backed Pannone’s argument. He compared tracking data from NBA stars to former G Leaguers. While reigning NBA MVP Nikola Jokic averaged 101 touches per game, guard Gary Payton II, who was called up from the Raptors 905 to the Golden State Warriors in 2020, averaged just 6.3 touches. While Dallas Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic possessed the ball for an average of 6.02 seconds per touch, Miami Heat sharpshooter Duncan Robinson averaged just 1.56 seconds. While three-time scoring champion James Harden averaged 4.96 dribbles per touch, Oklahoma City Thunder wing Lu Dort averaged just 1.36. And so on. NBA front offices weren’t combing the G League for the next Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, or James Harden. They didn’t covet isolation players with score-first mentalities. And neither did Pannone.
In 2020 assistant coach Perry Huang had done an independent study of NBA call-ups. He found that very few of the top G League scorers were making it to the NBA. During the 2016–17 season only three of the thirty-eight total call-ups ranked in the top fifteen in scoring; in 2017–18, five of the fifty-one; in 2018–19, three of the forty-eight; and in 2019–20, four of the thirty-nine. Huang’s research confirmed what he and Pannone already knew—there was no scoring one’s way out of the G League. As Huang wrote in a presentation sharing his findings, NBA teams were searching more for consummate professionals and mistake-free role players than flashy bucket-getters.
In theory, that was a good thing; it made life simpler. Jobs were whittled down, responsibilities were fewer, burdens were lighter. A player once asked to fill every role was now instructed to focus on just one or two things. Dominate the boards and protect the rim; facilitate the offense and knock down threes. Much easier, right?
Wrong. The main obstacle was ego. Players wanted bigger roles, more responsibilities, heavier burdens. One of the toughest challenges facing any G League staff was to convince a bunch of former stars to become something less, to sacrifice more, to accept that if they sought to move up the ladder instead of down, they would never be stars again.
“A big reason guys get stuck in the G League is because they don’t realize the position they’re trying out for,” Chicago Bulls guard Alex Caruso, who played 106 games in the G League from 2016 to 2019, said on The Old Man and the Three podcast. “It’s like going to a job interview thinking you’re going to be the CFO of the company, and they’re looking for someone to clean the bathrooms.”1
“One thing I realized is that so many guys get in their own way and can’t get out of the way of whatever it is, whether it be their egos or a lack of willingness to accept a role,” said Duncan Robinson, who spent part of the 2018–19 season with the Sioux Falls Skyforce. “I think the examples of guys who have played in the G League and gone on to have success in the NBA, more often than not, it’s people who are level-headed around This is where I fit in and this is how I’m going to have an impact at the NBA level. Alex Caruso is a great example.”
The blueprint to reach the NBA, as Pannone told his team during that first meeting, was to do a specific job exceptionally well. Pannone even shared his definition of the phrase do your job, which he would repeat many times in the months to come: “It means complete your assignments, execute to the best of your ability, and trust that your teammates will do the same. To become a championship team, everyone must be bought into their role and do their job.”
Training camp for the Squadron was held at Birmingham-Southern College (BSC), a private university three miles west of the city’s downtown. For a team of this caliber, the conditions were laughable. It was like placing a bunch of PhD candidates in eighth grade biology. The Bill Burch Gymnasium wasn’t even the main gym at BSC, which, for reasons described by coaches as a “sensitive subject,” was not regularly made available. This gym was on the second floor of a weathered, red-brick building, indistinguishable from any of the other buildings on the school’s campus. It was dimly lit, and stained gray paint was peeling from the walls. Thick layers of dust had gathered in the corners and crevices. Light streaked in through the tall windows behind each basket, making the rims barely visible from certain angles. A busted scoreboard hung over one sideline, stuck on the same score, with the same time remaining.
Coaches had moved some equipment in—a stationary bike, training tables, water coolers—to give the space a slightly more professional feel, but in reality, this was a below-average high school gym packed with former and future NBA players. Nothing fit, both literally and figuratively. Their bodies seemed too big for the space, their talent too advanced for such an amateurish environment. When someone dunked, especially Cheatham, the basket shook so violently that it appeared on the verge of collapsing.
The first practice was at 6:30 p.m. on the evening of October 25. Coaches had little control over the scheduling. This wasn’t the Squadron’s facility; it was one of forty-five buildings on the 192-acre Birmingham-Southern campus. A new team facility was in the works for the 2022–23 season, but for now, a lot just depended on the school. Pannone was presented with available time slots and simply took advantage of what he could get. “That’s the G League,” he said, when asked about the arrangement. It was a common refrain used throughout the minors.
Can’t choose your gym time? That’s the G League. Filming practice on an iPhone to save $100? That’s the G League. Stuck in a middle seat on a flight to South Dakota? That’s the G League. Chick-fil-A breakfasts and Chipotle dinners? That’s the G League. Four games in six nights? That’s the G League.
“Be prepared for the unpreparable,” Pannone said about life in the G. “The reality is that for most of these guys, everything is worse. If you’re coming from a Division I school, how we travel is worse; what we eat is worse; our facilities are worse; our gear is worse. But being in the G League is about guys who love to hoop. You have to be easygoing. You have to be able to go with the flow.”
Most of Birmingham’s players were from highly regarded Division I programs. It was an interesting array of characters, all of whom had signed in the G League and then been acquired by the team—a process that allows players to be called up to any NBA franchise, not just direct affiliates. University of Alabama guard John Petty Jr., Montana guard Sayeed Pridgett, and Georgia Tech center James Banks III were recent college graduates. Zylan Cheatham (Arizona State), Jared Harper (Auburn), Malcolm Hill (Illinois), Tra Holder (Arizona State), and Riley LaChance (Vanderbilt) were all in their mid-twenties, having competed overseas or in the minors for a handful of seasons. And Joe Young (Oregon) and Ra’Shad James (Iona) were seasoned veterans, probably closer to the end of their careers than the beginning.
Some G League organizations focused solely on acquiring young talent. The reasoning was sound; by loading up on young players, they increased their odds of uncovering a few hidden gems with plenty of time to develop. Guys like Young and James were more likely to have reached their full potential already. There was less mystery behind them—teams had a better idea of what they were getting. But with a rookie like Petty, the picture that executives could paint in their heads was intoxicating. The sky was the limit.
Birmingham’s front office had followed that approach in its first year (2019–20), when the franchise was located in Erie, Pennsylvania. But it backfired—big time. Entering the season with six rookies messed up the development process. Chemistry and structure were lacking. The buy-in was minimal. Losses mounted. Before the season was shut down due to COVID, the team had the third-worst record in the league (13-30). From that point forward, the staff’s approach changed. “We learned, year one, we can’t come in with six rookies,” Chasanoff said. “It’s just not going to be a successful process. So, we wanted guys with experience.”
Zylan Cheatham was the only player from that woeful first year in Erie back with the organization. And even then, it was a different Zylan Cheatham. By his own admission, the six-foot-eight forward was less engaged as a rookie in 2019. He didn’t care as much about the process. He was signed to a two-way contract with the New Orleans Pelicans, splitting his time between the NBA and the minors. Yet Cheatham was only concerned with the NBA, so when he was assigned to Erie, he wasn’t always present.
“I wish I would have embraced [the G League] more,” he later said about that season. “I think my rookie year, being on a two-way, I was so focused on the fact that I’m potentially on the Pelicans or whatever. I was more focused on being an NBA player, as opposed to just taking it day-by-day and getting better and being ready for whenever my opportunity [came].”
“I think what’s tough is when you have a player like that—he’s at a big school, he’s kind of been propped up on this pedestal a little bit by whatever it is, his circle or his school or his coaches, and then on top of that you’re with [the agency] Roc Nation,” added Coach Huang, who was also on the staff in Erie. “And you’re on a two-way. So yes, in some ways, I don’t think anybody laid out how it was supposed to happen. This doesn’t just go for Z—I think this goes for a lot of guys. When they get these [two-way] contracts, they think they’re already NBA players. When in reality, this is literally just a tryout. It’s a tryout for a season.”
Cheatham’s perspective was more mature now. He was twenty-five years old and fully appreciated that, one, he hadn’t truly made it yet, and, two, the G League was a valuable resource—a trampoline that could spring him to the next level. For good.
Birmingham had traded for Cheatham over the summer with the hope that he would become one of the team’s leaders. Cheatham is, in a word, engaging. His natural voice commands attention; low and gravelly, it sounds like it might be booming through a PA system on an airplane. He is the type of person who jumps out of bed every morning, eager for whatever lies ahead, bursting with the excitement of a six-year-old who just spotted the ice cream truck. As his close friend and teammate at Arizona State, Rob Edwards, once explained, “If Zylan’s just going to the store, he’s hyped to go to the store.”
“I call my brother a ‘free spirit,’” Darvis Fletcher, Cheatham’s best friend, said. “Because he’s going to do him. He’s going to be him at all times. He’s going to be smiling, laughing, cracking jokes. He’s going to be obnoxiously loud, probably blasting music. He’s unapologetically him. You gotta love him for it. You don’t have a choice—he’s going to bring the best energy out of you at all times. It’s contagious. You love being around that.”
Cheatham regularly switches the style of his hair, often dyeing it red. He rocks large sunglasses and glitzy jewelry, including a hefty “Z-Cheat” chain. He makes rap music in his spare time, which he then dubs over his highlight mixes. He is tremendously confident, but not overconfident. Sure of himself, but not cocky. Comfortable in his own skin.
Others gravitate to Cheatham immediately—always have. Maybe it’s the broad smile, or the infectious laugh, or the boundless energy. Whatever it is, it makes him the center of every room he steps into. On day one of training camp, Cheatham danced around to his favorite artist, the rapper Future. He joked with his new teammates. He hollered words of encouragement from the sidelines.
“Get better!”
“Lock in!”
“Keep going!”
None of it felt forced or phony. Cheatham was an effortless leader, popular with seemingly everyone. As Fletcher said, “You love being around that.”
Of course, Cheatham hoped he wouldn’t be around for that long. He was perhaps the likeliest player on the Squadron to get called up to the NBA. Physically, he possessed all the tools: height (six-foot-eight), strength, speed, agility, athleticism. His skill set had improved considerably during the offseason too. Cheatham was clearly right there, right on the precipice of making it. Had it not been for a few unlucky breaks over the preceding years, he might already be in the NBA.
After his rookie season with the Pelicans and BayHawks, which was disrupted by COVID, Cheatham was sent to the Oklahoma City Thunder as part of a blockbuster trade that included big names like Jrue Holiday, Steven Adams, and Eric Bledsoe. The unexpected turn of events was actually good for Cheatham. New Orleans signed him to a three-year contract (first year guaranteed) to make the deal work, which would then be absorbed by Oklahoma City.
“My agent called basically congratulating me,” Cheatham remembered. “Like, ‘You made it. You went from undrafted, to two-way, to basically getting converted to a three-year, $5 million deal.’” Cheatham would also be reunited with his former Arizona State teammate Luguentz Dort. “And [Lu] was one of the rising stars on the team,” he continued, “and they were a young core that to me didn’t really have that boisterous dog on the floor that could anchor the defense and bring energy. So I was beyond excited. My whole life changed. Everything changed.”
“We was geeked up,” said Fletcher. “The chance to play with Lu again—a big thing. To finally be on an NBA team and actually have an opportunity to get on the floor and show what you really can do, it was just crazy. Everybody was having an out of body experience when we heard that news. A lot of people calling and texting, congratulating me like I signed a contract. It was just crazy, like, I can’t believe this dude really just signed this deal. This is something we dreamed about and it’s about to happen.”
This was it—the moment he and Darvis had always imagined back in South Phoenix, training at the South Mountain Community Center. Everything was falling into place. Cheatham would still have to prove himself in training camp, but all signs pointed toward a future in Oklahoma City. The Thunder had expressed interest in him on draft night in 2019; he was asked to pick a jersey number; he did interviews with the media and spoke with head coach Billy Donovan; the team posted a “Welcome to OKC” graphic on its Instagram. “I knew once I got there and got on the floor, there’s no way I’m losing my spot,” Cheatham said. “I knew that I would’ve had a chance to show that I’m worth these three years, $5 million.”
Opening night of the 2020–21 season was pushed back to December due to the pandemic. Cheatham’s flight from Phoenix to Oklahoma City was booked for a Friday, a couple days before training camp was scheduled to begin. During the week prior, he started to feel . . . different. Not sick, but different. He was uncharacteristically lethargic, falling asleep in his car one afternoon while parked in the driveway and taking naps that turned into full eight-hour slumbers. It was strange for anyone to be that tired. For someone like Zylan, whose blood seemed permanently infused with espresso and Red Bull, it was inconceivable. Something was obviously wrong. He took a COVID test on Thursday morning, about twenty-four hours before he was supposed to leave for OKC. The results came back soon after: Cheatham was positive.
At the time, confirmed cases were required to quarantine for ten days. The NBA had its own set of strict protocols, on top of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines. Cheatham would have to return multiple negative tests before reporting to the Thunder. Because of the timing, he would miss a significant chunk of training camp. And so, on December 2, 2020, just a week after the trade with New Orleans had been finalized, Cheatham was waived.
The swing was shocking and abrupt, perhaps the most crushing moment of his career. In the span of a week, his dream had been realized—and then snatched away. “To go from such an emotional high to an emotional low that quick was devastating,” Cheatham said.
The first year of his contract ($1.5 million) would still be owed, but the money was a consolation prize. Cheatham was back to square one—back in the G League, where he joined the Iowa Wolves, the affiliate of the Minnesota Timberwolves. His vision of playing alongside Lu Dort, rocking an orange-and-blue Thunder uniform, vanished like a drawing on an Etch A Sketch.
“I’m sure he’s probably still thinking about that and the ‘what ifs,’” said Edwards, who played with Cheatham and Dort at Arizona State. “But it’s a new day. Everybody’s path is different. I know he’ll find his way back.”
Rain showers were passing through Birmingham all afternoon. In a matter of minutes, the Bill Burch court might be too dangerous to play on. It was day four of training camp and shutting down wasn’t an option. But practicing on a slippery floor? That was obviously out of the question.
The rain continued. As expected, droplets began seeping through cracks in the walls, trickling onto the court. Players dug their shoes into the hardwood to test the traction. Nope—this wasn’t going to work. There was a scramble to find out if they could relocate to the main gym, briefly interrupting practice. Once McGowan got the go-ahead from the school, the move was both methodical and swift. Guys collected their belongings. Managers packed up all the equipment. Coaches hustled to the other gym and started taping the floor, marking the NBA three-point line. Pannone huddled the team at midcourt.
“This is the fucking G League,” he said. “Shit happens. Adjust to it. Don’t let it ruin practice.”
Behind the scenes, Squadron employees were dealing with bigger problems. The team was supposed to travel to College Park, Georgia, the following evening—a Friday—ahead of its sole preseason game against the College Park Skyhawks on Saturday. The trip was short, only about a two-and-a-half-hour drive down I-20. There was just one issue: the bus company had suddenly canceled. David Lane, the Squadron’s general manager of business operations, spent hours calling other options in the Southeast. None of them had drivers available on such short notice. The team already had a twenty-two-passenger van that was used to shuttle guys back and forth from their apartments and the practice facility. It wasn’t particularly spacious, especially for a bunch of professional basketball players, but it would have to work. Lane was able to book one other van to transport the coaches. Both vehicles would be driven by members of the Squadron staff. Joseph Hooven, head of public relations, chauffeured the coaches.
The journey was far from ideal—Hooven even had to make an emergency stop due to low tire pressure—but the Squadron reached College Park. The preceding week had been arduous: film at 10:00 a.m. every morning, followed by two-a-days. Coaches had meticulously plotted out the schedule for each practice, down to the precise minute. Drills were fast-paced and intense, with very short breaks in between. There was an emphasis on doing the little things. To the average basketball fan, those things would seem really little: getting an early high-hand contest on all three-point shooters, finishing cuts to maintain spacing on offense, being in exactly the right shifts on defense. Success, Pannone preached, was all in the details.
A few players still needed to be cut from the roster, so the preseason matinee against the Skyhawks (affiliated with the Atlanta Hawks) was a crucial opportunity for executives to evaluate. College Park was using the event as a trial run for the season, granting entry to a small number of fans. Hype videos still played on the jumbotron. Arena employees manned food stands that saw but a handful of customers. T-shirt tosses were more like games of catch. Starting lineups and other announcements blared from the arena’s sound system, only to be met with awkward silence.
Birmingham played well. Everyone contributed to a wire-to-wire 95–90 victory. Hill set the tone early, knocking down multiple threes and taking a charge that pumped up the bench. After struggling in the first half, Young dominated the third quarter. He was prone to huge scoring outbursts, flashes where it seemed as though he could hurl a ball from the upper deck and it would still find its way into the basket. Squadron fans in attendance were already captivated by him. “Get Joe Young back in the game!” one screamed, as Young was resting in the fourth quarter. “We need some threes!”
The Squadron got enough threes and played well enough defense to come out on top. Pannone liked a lot of what he saw—mainly, the effort and unselfishness. Of course, there was also a lot that he didn’t like. The pace was too slow, the spacing too cramped. Pannone wasn’t strict, but he was constantly nitpicking, searching for every mistake that could possibly be fixed, including his own. In the locker room following the win, he spent much of his speech encouraging the team to watch film of the game later that evening. All of the best players, Pannone stressed, diligently studied film. “Take ownership of your career,” he said.
There wasn’t much time to fix the mistakes Pannone had identified. Final cuts would be made on Wednesday, and the regular season was set to begin on Friday. Overall, training camp spanned just eleven days.
In the NBA, training camps last three weeks, encompassing multiple preseason games. Since NBA rosters stay relatively consistent, chemistry is easier to build at that level. Systems are easier to implement. Mistakes are easier to fix.
Everything moved a beat faster in the G. The schedule was compressed: fifty total games from November to April, then playoffs. Squadron players had just arrived in Birmingham. Many of them were still getting acquainted. Now their opener against the Greensboro Swarm was right around the corner.
“If you look at the NBA level, guys are getting workouts in pretty much all summer,” Cheatham reflected one afternoon. “They’re linking up. They know who their teammates are going to be for the most part. Despite the rookies and trades, the core pretty much stays together. For us to have pretty much a completely new core—I think we got a little advantage that some of our guys were at [Pelicans] training camp together, and we knew each other a little bit, but that full team chemistry, I mean, you’re only as good as your weakest link. To be able to get everybody on board in such a short time is a challenge. But I don’t think it’s impossible.”