Trinidadian John­ny Hamil­ton hopes to make the NBA regular season

(TRINIDAD GUARDIAN) John­ny Hamil­ton’s wind­ing jour­ney from south Trinidad has tak­en him to the doorstep of the NBA.

Now, the 24-year-old sev­en-foot­er from Rio Claro just has to bust through that last step to the world’s high­est pro­fes­sion­al bas­ket­ball stage.

Hamil­ton start­ed train­ing camp this week with the De­troit Pis­tons af­ter im­press­ing team of­fi­cials dur­ing his play in NBA Sum­mer League re­cent­ly in Las Ve­gas.

He is one of 20 play­ers in camp with the Pis­tons, who will have 15 play­ers on their stan­dard ros­ter dur­ing the reg­u­lar sea­son. With a re­port­ed par­tial­ly guar­an­teed con­tract, Hamil­ton is ex­pect­ed to be­gin the sea­son with the Grand Rapids Dri­ve of the NBA G League, a team af­fil­i­at­ed with the Pis­tons that is one step away from the NBA.

“It’s amaz­ing. They re­al­ly like me and that’s re­al­ly helped,” Hamil­ton said Mon­day as the Pis­tons met with me­dia mem­bers at Lit­tle Cae­sars Are­na in down­town De­troit. “Every­one mess­es with me and teach­es me. If I mess up in prac­tice with a drill or some­thing, they’ll ac­tu­al­ly stop prac­tice and show me how to do it right.”

Hamil­ton caught on with the Pis­tons dur­ing the sum­mer league, which is sep­a­rate from the NBA’s reg­u­lar sea­son and gives young play­ers and free agents like Hamil­ton a chance to prove them­selves.

The cen­tre showed enough – scor­ing 4.0 points, grab­bing 6.7 re­bounds and block­ing 1.7 shots per game in three games – to war­rant the Pis­tons ex­tend­ing a con­tract to Hamil­ton to join the team in train­ing camp.

Af­ter Las Ve­gas, Hamil­ton joined the Pis­tons for off-sea­son team work­outs in Los An­ge­les, play­ing along­side NBA All-Stars such as An­dre Drum­mond and Blake Grif­fin.

“They re­al­ly like spend­ing time and work­ing on me get­ting bet­ter as a play­er, even though I just start­ed,” Hamil­ton said.

In LA, he al­so met Kevin Du­rant, Hamil­ton’s favourite play­er when he start­ed watch­ing the NBA while Du­rant was with the Ok­la­homa City Thun­der.

“He was a re­al­ly nice guy,” Hamil­ton said of Du­rant, now with the Gold­en State War­riors.

Hamil­ton is hop­ing to join a short list of play­ers born in T&T to make the NBA.

Ken Charles played five sea­sons with the Buf­fa­lo Braves and At­lanta Hawks from 1973-78 and Carl Her­rera played eight sea­sons with four teams from 1991-99, win­ning two NBA cham­pi­onships with the Hous­ton Rock­ets.

He al­so has some fam­i­ly lin­eage in the game, as his fa­ther, Tony, was an ac­com­plished play­er in T&T’s top bas­ket­ball league.

Tony Hamil­ton, a preach­er who is nick­named “Corn­bread” af­ter Ja­maal Wilkes’ char­ac­ter in the 1975 movie “Corn­bread, Earl and Me,” played in Trinidad on teams in Rio Claro and San Fer­nan­do with stand­outs like Lennox Sobers and Joseph Lenny Guy.

“I’m sure I fol­low in my dad’s foot­steps,” Hamil­ton said. “I try to get back once a year, twice a year on a good year. I haven’t been home in the past year and four months. Hope­ful­ly, I can be there for Christ­mas but if I don’t then next sum­mer.”

Hamil­ton was a foot­ball play­er in high school but went to Jack­sonville Col­lege in Texas to play bas­ket­ball af­ter tak­ing up the game up as a 16-year-old.

Af­ter two sea­sons, Hamil­ton went to Vir­ginia Tech but suf­fered a thumb in­jury dur­ing his se­nior year. Af­ter grad­u­at­ing with a de­gree in so­ci­ol­o­gy, he at­tend­ed one post-grad year at Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas-Ar­ling­ton (UTA), scor­ing 11.1 points, grab­bing 8.1 re­bounds and block­ing 2.3 shots per game.

UTA team­mate Kevin Her­vey was draft­ed by Ok­la­homa City, but Hamil­ton was not se­lect­ed in June’s NBA Draft.

But Hamil­ton caught on with the Pis­tons in Ve­gas in Ju­ly and made the most of his op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“I re­bound­ed, I blocked shots, I ran the floor,” he said. “I did ex­act­ly what I was told to do. It was great.”

Hamil­ton al­so trained in the off-sea­son in Chica­go be­fore com­ing to De­troit, where new head coach Dwane Casey gave Hamil­ton a “role card,” where each play­er’s tasks are writ­ten out by the coach­ing staff.

“He said you just need to pro­tect the rim, pro­tect the paint, screen and roll hard to the rim,” Hamil­ton said. “Not a whole lot of peo­ple get the chance for the head coach to stop prac­tice and ex­plain some­thing. He doesn’t mind how many times I mess up. He sees po­ten­tial in me and takes time to teach me cer­tain things so I’m re­al­ly hap­py for that.”

Hamil­ton and the Pis­tons be­gan pre­sea­son games on Wednes­day against the Ok­la­homa City Thun­der, the first of five ex­hi­bi­tion games be­fore the team will make its cuts.

“I’m go­ing to be work­ing on that re­al­ly hard this train­ing camp and hope­ful­ly if I don’t make the team, I still have a chance to come back in the sea­son and play a few games with them,” Hamil­ton said.

The Pis­tons will open the reg­u­lar sea­son Oc­to­ber 17 against the Brook­lyn Nets. Grand Rapids opens the sea­son No­vem­ber 2 against the Erie Bay­Hawks.

“I’m very ex­cit­ed, I re­al­ly can’t be­lieve that I’m here,” he said. “I’m re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to it. I’m go­ing to do my job if I get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do it. So I’m go­ing to work hard in prac­tice so I do get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do it.”