Salt Lake City Stars roster and info after D-League Draft

The Utah Jazz have a D-League team, by the way. The Idaho Stampede are dead. The Salt Lake City Stars are the new team. Long live the new king! (Insert “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” [1972] speech here about this topic.) There are 22 teams in the NBA D-League, with the plans on eventually making it to 30 down the road. For a refresher, here are the teams:

The Stamps haven’t been that great, and they shared affiliation between the Jazz and the Portland Trail Blazers for a while. But things are going to change now with better cohesion with the Utah Jazz coaching staff and front office. Or so we would be led to believe. (SLCS Coaches weren’t in Jazz training camp this year, unlike previous seasons.) Furthermore, I don’t know how many Jazz front office peeps are in this picture of their Draft war room, but I do think that David Fredman seems to be the guy drinking the Diet Pepsi.

So, at worst, one member of the Jazz braintrust. Probably more though. (Okay, I also see you Bart Taylor!)

Anyway, the Salt Lake City Stars started off the NBA D-League draft with multiple picks over the many rounds — but after a while they had to STOP selecting players because they had reached their roster limit. (Okay?)

This happened midway through the third round of a six round draft. (Full Draft board here, for all six rounds) I had to find out who was on the roster because this seems like really great planning. I checked RealGM.com (who list Goodluck Okonoboh as being on the team, but he was traded to the Toronto Raptors NBA D-League team) and a few other places because the OFFICIAL SLCS page doesn’t have a link to a Roster anywhere. Knowing a little about how the NBA organizes their websites I did find this orphan that had some info on the team. It was incomplete, so I had to do more sleuthing.

AllThatAmar

Thanks to RealGM, Wikipedia, the NBA D League website, European BBALL Sites, and others for help with this. Anyway, I wouldn’t get too attached to any of these guys, let’s not forget last season the team had the #1 Draft pick, picked Jeff Ayres (formerly Jeff Pendergraph), who finished last season on the Los Angeles Clippers playoff roster.

The thing that’s really strange to me is that the Jazz were at the LIMIT for # of players on the training camp roster and had to give up their picks later on in the draft. And then they traded one of their draft picks for TWO more players? Huh? So they were at the limit, and then did a roster move to get to the limit +1 more players? You can’t blame me for thinking that at times this “franchise” is run like the Flint Tropics.

And the limit is 17 players, three fewer than the NBA training camps? It’s likely that the roster is 20, right? So there are two more guys I have yet to sleuth out.

Also, the team has two NBA Draft picks on their roster — guys drafted in the NBA. And both are combo guards (point guards / shooting guards). So in the NBA D-League draft they go out there and their big “get” is another point guard? (Ona-Embo) And then drafted another point guard (Bland)? And then made a draft day trade for another (Gary)?

Oh, and right now the Utah Jazz — this is the farm team for the Jazz, let’s not forget — has FOUR point guards right now in George Hill, Dante Exum, Shelvin Mack, and Raul Neto. Don’t forget to get your tickets fans! Watch the Stars!

These uniforms are dope still! And it’s likely that we’re going to see Joel Bolomboy a bit — there is a lot of minutes up for grabs at PF with the roster as is!