Jameel Warney played three games for the Dallas Mavericks in March of 2018, on a ten-day contract that he had signed while a member of the Mavericks’ G League affiliate, the Texas Legends. They were the only three games of his NBA career.
The 2017-18 campaign was Warney’s second season with the Legends, and it came on the back of two training camp appearances and summer league berths with the Mavericks. For the first two years of his professional career after graduating Stony Brook in the summer of 2016, Warney was very much on the Mavericks’ radar.
Unfortunately, he never broke through at the NBA level beyond those three games. Despite being a 20-10 player in the G League, with three America East Player of the Year awards and two conference Defensive Player of the Year wins across his college career – plus winning the MVP award at the 2017 FIBA AmeriCup while still in the Mavericks’ system – the NBA was the one level Warney could not thrive at.
Skilled, but slow by NBA standards and without the size of an NBA center, Warney did not have the athletic profile for the world’s top league. So after one more season in the G -League, he did what many strong skilled slow big men do in the professional realm – he took his talents to South Korea. And there he remains to this day.
Korean Basketball Favors The Paint Player
Since 2019, Warney has been a member of the Seoul SK Knights, and earlier this summer, he agreed to re-sign for a seventh season. Seven continuous seasons in any foreign league is a rarity for an American import player, let alone with the same team. Yet in Korea, there exists greater continuity than in much of the European game. Any player that can get into the league will generally find it to be something of a closed market.
Nevertheless, it still requires quality play to hold down a spot. And quality play is what Warney has delivered. In his six seasons to date, Warney has been the league’s scoring champion, and four times been voted the Most Valuable Player, including last year when he averaged 22.2 points, 12.0 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 1.4 blocks per game.
Almost all import players in Korea’s KBL play the big man spots. The Korean population is not the tallest – at least, not historically – and few homegrown talents can compete with the quality size that KBL clubs are able to bring in with their competitive (and consistent) salary payments. There is a greater degree of stability to Korean basketball than many other countries, and with his barrage of floaters, hook shots and kick-out passes, Warney offers similar stability on the court.
Warney, The Bill Russell Of The Place
A small degree of controversy has befallen Warney’s decision to come back for year seven.
Around about Christmas time, he had said that the 2024-25 season would be his last, only to agree to return to the Knights once they had improved their financial offer to him, a move that some of the fanbase has found unsavoury. Viewed through the American sports lens, a player leveraging his situation in order to maximize his earning potential seems fair enough, yet not everyone is satisfied, as anyone with an Instagram account and a translator can see.
Nevertheless, Warney will return for what appears to be his final season, hoping to push the Knights one step further. Last season, they were the regular season champions, but lost in Game 7 of the KBL Finals to the LG Sakers, headlined by Egyptian star Assem Marei. Warney has won four MVP awards in six seasons, something only ever done at the NBA level by LeBron James, Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It seems it is better to be the best basketball player in Korea than the 15th best in Dallas.
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post Former Mavericks Center is the Best Player in Korea appeared first on Heavy Sports.