While much of the focus last season was on the results of the Jimmy Butler trade, the Chicago Bulls had their own star forming in the G-League.

Chicago Bulls two-way guard Antonio Blakeney was one of the pleasant surprises of the 2018 season. As a Tiger at LSU, Blakeney was teammates with the NBA’s best rookie (or, non-rookie) Ben Simmons.

Blakeney is no stranger to creating his own shot, given Simmons’ known shooting struggles. His 17.2/4.8/1.7 stat-line led many analysts to believe he would hear his name called at the Draft. When that didn’t happen, the Bulls pounced on a player they had likely aggressively scouted, and signed him to their Summer League squad. There, it was pure bliss.
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Greensboro, North Carolina — It’s early April in Charlotte, North Carolina, but the spring has yet to properly break. The NBA playoffs are still weeks away but for the Charlotte Hornets, the reality of an early end to their season has already hit home. There will be no post-season basketball for them in 2018, so this might be the best opportunity to play some of their prospects from the G-League to hopefully unearth a diamond in the rough for next season and beyond.

A Dwight Howard technical foul during a game against the Brooklyn Nets — his 16th of the 2017-18 campaign — results in a one-game ban the following night when the team is set to face the Memphis Grizzlies.

The stage has been set for Mangok Mathiang.
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After Terry Rozier scored 21 points in the Celtics’ Feb. 11 loss to the Cavaliers, his older sister, Tre’Dasia Tucker, waited patiently for him in a hallway in the bowels of TD Garden. It was the first time she had seen him play in Boston, the first time she’d heard Celtics fans howl for him, and now she was excited for them to go to dinner and talk all about it.

Rozier drove his sister to one of his favorite restaurants, Strip by Strega, and when they arrived at the Back Bay steakhouse, Tucker asked her brother to grab her walker. She has cerebral palsy and is unable to walk without assistance, and even then she can usually travel just short distances.

But Rozier shook his head. He reminded her that she was with him now, and that nothing had changed from when they were teenagers.
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CLEVELAND, Ohio – Terry Rozier, the Shaker Heights High School grad now running the point for the Boston Celtics, is scary good.

A backup, he stepped in for injured star point guard Kyrie Irving (remember that guy?) and helped Boston dominate despite missing its two biggest stars in Irving and Gordon Hayward.

When you watch the Cavaliers take on the Celtics in Game One of the Eastern Conference Finals in Boston Sunday, you are likely to see fans, maybe even players on the bench, sporting “Scary Terry” T-shirts.

It uses the name of a character on the Adult Swim animated TV series, “Rick and Morty.” And it’s a caricature of Terry wearing a “Scream” mask. There are a number of versions. The whole “Scary Terry” thing has gone viral in Boston.
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Perhaps no one in the world has been invested in Terry Rozier’s success as much as I have. Nearly three years ago, at the 2015 NBA Rookie Photoshoot, Rozier more or less ended my athletic career when he essentially performed a series of NBA Street moves on me before draining a three in my face. (Unfortunately, there is visual evidence.) You could argue that moment was actually the highlight of Rozier’s rookie season, as he only appeared in 39 games for Boston in 2015–16. Fast forward to the 2018 playoffs, Rozier has become a key cog in the Celtics machine, and I’m telling everyone I was humiliated by a future All-Star.
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BOSTON — Back in late January, Kyrie Irving and Stephen Curry were engaged in one of the most tantalizing point guard battles of the 2017-18 season. But watching the Boston Celtics-Golden State Warriors showdown from afar, one of their brethren in the NBA’s elite point guard society couldn’t take his eyes off another ball handler on the court that night.

Right around the time that Terry Rozier put Kevin Durant on his heels with a vicious jab step that freed Boston’s third-year guard for a game-tying 3-pointer, Houston Rockets guard Chris Paul took to Twitter and wrote, “Really like watchin Terry Rozier hoop … plays hard on both sides!”

Little more than a month later, after Rozier and the Celtics gave the streaking Rockets all they could handle on their home court, Paul made it a point to seek out Rozier after the final horn. His message?
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On Jan. 31, with Celtics point guards Kyrie Irving, Marcus Smart, and Shane Larkin all sidelined with injuries, Terry Rozier drew his first career start. Rozier responded by registering his first ever triple-double and leading Boston to a win over the Knicks. Two nights later he poured in a career-high 31 points in a win over the Hawks, and two nights after that he drilled a jump-shot with 14 seconds left that helped send the Celtics to a 1-point win over the Blazers.

On a Celtics team that is somewhat devoid of personality, Rozier’s humor and everyman qualities had already become endearing, particularly to a loyal subset of fans on Twitter and Reddit. Rozier’s representatives at Verus Management had been tracking his popularity on social media channels and seen how even the most basic Rozier-related quips and quotes seemed to resonate, and now this three-game burst had made him a bit more mainstream. It was an opportunity to build his brand.
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