Much has been made of Brad Newley's match-up with friend and fellow Boomer Joe Ingles when the Sydney Kings face the Utah Jazz in Salt Lake City later on Tuesday, but for Newley -- who has two Olympic Games campaigns under his belt, and previous NBA Summer League experience -- it also represents an opportunity to pit his skills against a legitimate NBA team for the first time.
"I had a chat with Joe yesterday, just saying 'what are you guys gonna get up to'?" Newley told ESPN at the Kings morning shootaround. "They're going to come in and give their best. It's going to be no joke, that's for sure."
Standing 6'6 and having the versatility to handle both the shooting guard role and small forward position, Newley represents one of Australian basketball's great 'what ifs' when it comes to playing in the NBA.
Drafted in the second-round with the 54th overall pick by the Houston Rockets in 2007, Newley played three games with the team during Summer League that year, averaging 3.3 points, 3 rebounds and 1 assist per game.
Like anything in life, however, it all boiled down to being in the right place at the right time, and the Rockets had players such as Tracy McGrady and Shane Battier, so finding a roster spot for Newley was almost impossible.
"When I was drafted initially by Houston they were a playoff-calibre team, so to break into the roster was always going to be pretty difficult," he said. "What my situation was, I was an import in Europe, and as far as getting really good jobs is concerned, [they're] hard to come by and I didn't want to risk missing out on a good job to have the chance of maybe sneaking onto a [NBA] roster."
So Newley headed to Europe playing in top leagues in Greece, Turkey and Spain, where he developed his game and continued to display a 'positionless versatility' that would eventually become en vogue in the NBA as well.
In recent years the NBA has trended towards more 'small-ball' lineups, and although the Golden State Warriors weren't the first to experiment with such an idea, their success over the past few seasons has ensured that a vast majority of the league is now shifting in the way of showcasing positionless players who can play and defend multiple positions.
This begs the question: Was Newley drafted ahead of his time? Had he been drafted a few seasons later, would he have had more of an opportunity to make, and stick with, an NBA team?
"I've never actually thought about it that way but now you say it and I look at it from the bigger picture I think, yeah, maybe I was just a couple of years too early," Newley told ESPN. "The way the game's gone forward, the way it's changed .. who knows, yeah, maybe [I could have]."
Kings coach Andrew Gaze, himself a part of a successful San Antonio Spurs team in the late 90s, agrees with the notion that Newley may have been ahead of his time when it came to making the NBA.
"There may be some merit [to that] in that his prospects, the way the game is being played now, would have been a lot higher than when he was initially drafted," Gaze told ESPN.
"I think a lot of players you can look back and say, as a generation passes and new ideas come into play, that that would favour certain players in certain areas as opposed to others, but he's had a wonderful career."
Back to the game against the Jazz. Could it provide Newley the chance to lay some ghosts to rest about whether or not he could have played in the NBA?
"I don't wanna put it all on one game like that. I've played in situations where there's been NBA calibre [opposition] before so tonight's not the be-all-end-all for me," he said.
"I've worked out to have a pretty good career, and I'm still going."
His focus right now, though, is on the Sydney Kings, and pushing them into the NBL playoffs again this season. Newley believes the game against the Jazz feels like it will be a good barometer of where the Kings are in terms of their preparation for the coming NBL season. They open their campaign at home against the Adelaide 36ers on Saturday.
"We've just had a few discussions quietly about, 'let's just get better as a group' - our goal is Saturday night back home," he said. "If we can improve tonight it'll make Saturday easy and that's what we've all been saying: bigger picture. For us, that's the most important thing."
