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Dylan Harper entered the 2025 NBA Draft as one of the top prospects. He and Duke forward Cooper Flagg were the consensus choices on mock drafts everywhere. Harper was a no-brainer for the San Antonio Spurs at No. 2. However, Harper and his Rutgers teammate, Ace Bailey, were scrutinized for months leading up to the draft. Harper spoke about the pre-draft process with Carmelo Anthony on Thursday’s episode of 7PM in Brooklyn. When he talked about how he approached the overwhelming attention he received, Harper credited two other young stars. Bronny James and Shedeur Sanders were both placed under the media’s microscope. However, each of them tackled it in different ways. Harper observed each and used their experience to inform his own decisions.
“I mean just learning. I think learning how to carry yourself go about certain things but at the end of the day like everyone is their own person. So like Bronny, he ain’t the most out loud spoken guy like Shedeur, very quiet,” Harper said about the stars that came before him. “But he still gets the same backlash gets. So at the end of the day you’re still going to get the backlash no matter what you do, whether it’s right wrong or anything else. So just having that mindset that like we’re the next generation of these superstar kids and there’s always going to be a spotlight on us no matter what and just going with that mindset just like being you honestly that’s how I look just being me.”
After a fruitful training session on Tuesday, Sanders rallied the entire Sixers squad during team dinner. In particular, Coach Prime expressed just how much he craves to see a matchup between Embiid and the reigning Finals MVP, especially when the heavyweight clash between the two best players in the league didn't materialize back in March when The Process decided to sit out. “It's a little different today. A lot of folks duck that smoke right now. […] If Embiid's playing the Joker, I wanna see Embiid versus the Joker,” Sanders said, via Alec Gwin. “And [Jokic] goes and gets it, right? I love it. I love that matchup. That's what I want to see.”
Longtime NBA referee Monty McCutchen, who has been a vice president of referee development and training for the past six seasons, is remaining in his role and will work "in concert" with Sanders, the league said. Sanders will direct the NBA officiating program with responsibility for the recruitment, hiring, supervision and evaluation of all referees, and he will also oversee the NBA's Replay Center. While Sanders has a higher title than McCutchen, both of them will report directly to Byron Spruell, the NBA's president of league operations. "Albert is a proven team leader who excels at bringing key stakeholders together to engage on challenging issues and identify needs and opportunities," Spruell said in a statement. "Our officiating program will benefit greatly from his expertise in operations management and organizational strategy."
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After being drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks in 2010, Sanders said it became "an issue" for him as he tried to "conform to someone else's standards." "You know, I like living life on my terms because I can and thrive," he elaborated, adding, "Being talked to certain kind of ways, kind of that bought and sold atmosphere … I ain't really like that s--t."
Williamson met with Sanders in his office after the sermon. Sanders disputed the notion that Williamson seemed moody or uninterested in the New Orleans community. “I think he’s in great spirits because I literally had to have one of my deacons pull him out of the crowd. They didn’t want to let him go, and he didn’t want to let them go. He took a lot of pictures and talked with a lot of people. He didn’t seem to be in any way, shape or form distant. He’s ready to do what he came here to do, is what it appeared to me.”
While Sanders is doing well as an entrepreneur and businessman, he very much has the desire to return to the NBA — but the league’s policies on marijuana have to change in order for that to happen. “I feel like the stage is kind of being set,” Sanders believes. “The NBA is becoming more open-minded with their marijuana policy. Whether they're going to test or not. Whether they'll have guys in the drug program or not. I don’t know if people know how much of a factor that is for me.”
Each workout began with a shoe-less mile on the treadmill. Randle began his time with Sanders running it in eight minutes, by the end he was running a 5:30 mile. Sanders follows up on the runs with what he calls “aggressive overload” workouts meant to improve explosion, agility, balance and strength, building up weights and workouts in phases. “I told him,” Sanders said, “they need him in much better shape if he’s gonna be an All-Star.”
L.S. briefly had a comeback with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2017 ... but reportedly struggled with keeping up with his responsibilities. We spoke with Sanders about his career ... and he makes it clear he's not ready to hang up the sneaks yet. "I think with things shifting a bit, me still young, I feel like I'm in the prime stage, I can definitely contribute." "I would just love to contribute to a team and help them win and give my knowledge, give my defensive presence and just being able to play basketball." "That's ideal for me. That sounds like heaven."
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When Cavaliers center Tristan Thompson suffered a sprained thumb late in the season, missing four games, Sanders got only two minutes of non-garbage time action in that span. Part of it was because he wasn’t in the requisite shape, and part of it was that with the Cavs in a fight for the No. 1 seed, Sanders wasn’t about to suddenly leapfrog more trusted players in coach Tyronn Lue’s rotation. “He was having a hard time from a conditioning standpoint,” Griffin said. “But it was really the fact that they didn’t want to play him more. So it’s more the fact of Tristan is out, you’re not going to play Kevin [Love] all that much, how are we not playing him? Why won’t you play this guy? When we got to the point where it became clear that even in the situation where we had no other bigs, he wasn’t going to play, then what are we doing here?
Now Sanders is gone again after he struggled keeping up with responsibilities on and off the court. He missed the team bus from the hotel to the airport Tuesday in Miami, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation told The Athletic, the final blow to his time here after Sanders had previously struggled with punctuality.
Is there enough time before the NBA playoffs to get Sanders to a level where he can actually play a few minutes here or there and provide some kind of resistance on defense? "I just started," Sanders said. "It's a process and you just have to invest in it, trust it and I've been on every side of the spectrum. I've been through D-League to fouling out of games in the summer to having a double-double. It's a process and I'm used to it."
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