DETROIT – When the Suns offered Mike James a two-way contract last summer, he was intrigued.
There was only one problem.
“I didn’t know what they were talking about,” James said. “I never heard of such a thing in my life.”
So, James researched the contract, a device of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.
In addition to 15 players on standard contracts, each NBA team is allowed two two-way players. Two-way players earn a prorated minimum NBA salary while with the parent club and a prorated minor-league salary while with the affiliate. They can spend up to 45 days in the NBA.
James’ 45th day will be Wednesday. He has spent the entire season in Phoenix, the clock starting once the Northern Arizona Suns opened training camp.
Suns general manager Ryan McDonough has already said he wants to get James onto a standard contract so he can stay in Phoenix. The Suns can unilaterally convert his deal to a one-year standard minimum contract, or they could reach a new multi-year agreement. Similar to second-round negotiations, the team would offer additional guarantees in exchange for James locking into a multi-year minimum or near-minimum deal.
Either way, it’ll be an awesome achievement for James, who started at Eastern Arizona community college, transferred to Lamar, went undrafted in 2012 then worked his way up through Croatia, Israel, Italy, Greece, Spain then Greece again.
His whirlwind journey continued to Phoenix, where he became starting point guard in game four – immediately after the Suns fired Earl Watson and banished starting point guard Eric Bledsoe. James provided a much-needed spark, scoring 18 points and hitting the go-ahead shot in the Suns’ first win:
The only two-way player to start in the NBA, James ceded his starting spot after 10 games to Tyler Ulis. But James remains an rotation regular, and he has scored nearly as many points (260) as all other two-way players combined (284). The leaderboard:
James is unquestionably the biggest success story for a two-way player so far.
“I don’t really think about it,” James said. “I just think I’m regular player.”
Contract status aside, the 27-year-old rookie must relish just being in the NBA, right?
“To be honest, I didn’t think about it as much as everybody else thought about it for me,” James said. “I think I just kind of played, and then this opportunity came, and I took it. I didn’t really think about, ‘Oh, I might never go’ or ‘I might never do this.’ It just didn’t bother me.”
Even now, the Portland native says he appreciates being the NBA because he’s closer to family more than he cares about the status of reaching the peak of his profession.
James says he dislikes attention. He even appreciated the cloak implicitly provided by the former NBA player who shared the same name – the now-42-year-old who played for the Heat, Celtics, Pistons, Bucks, Rockets, Raptors, Timberwolves, New Orleans Hornets, Wizards, Bulls and Mavericks in a 12-year NBA career that ended in 2014.
Now, the Suns’ James is starting to make a name for himself.
“I think it’s starting to pick up a little more,” James said. “I don’t know. I hope it doesn’t get too big.”
