With the 2025 EuroBasket tournament beginning later this week, the teams competing are announcing their final rosters. And the Poland team features a former Toronto Raptor.
Combo guard Jordan Loyd spent the 2018-19 season as a member of the Raptors on a two-way contract, which he signed after impressing on their summer league rosters in each of 2017 and 2018. He would spend one day short of an entire calendar year with them, appearing in 55 minutes across 12 games on the season and recording 29 points, 9 rebounds and 6 assists in that time.
Loyd instead spent the majority of that year in the G League with the Raptors’ affiliate, the Raptors 905, averaging 22.5 points, 6.1 assists and 5.5 rebounds per game on a .614 true shooting percentage. Those numbers spoke to his qualities as an all-around offensive player. However, aside from a follow-up summer league performance in the summer of 2019, that stint in the Raptors was also the sum total of Loyd’s NBA career.
But he has not been held back by this. Far from it, in fact.
Loyd Is Not A Classic Polish Surname
When his stint with the Raptors ended and he left as a free agent, Loyd returned to Europe, and has been a EuroLeague player ever since. The EuroLeague is a continent-wide competition featuring the very best teams from all across Europe, and Loyd has played in it for six seasons with six different teams – Valencia (Spain), Crvena Zvezda (Serbia), Zenit Saint Petersburg (Russia), Maccabi Tel-Aviv (Israel), and AS Monaco (France). He has averaged double-figures in scoring every year except the last one, peaking with a 17.3 points per game average in the 2020-21 season with Crvena Zvezda.
For myriad reasons not worth examining in this space, individual player stats are invariably lower in the EuroLeague than they are in the NBA. It is of note, then, that Loyd’s 17.3 points per game average that season was the third-best mark in the competition, behind only fellow scoring guards Alexey Shved and Mike James.
Having turned 32 years old in July, Loyd is unmistakably into the back nine of his career, and will now take on a new challenge. Upon leaving North America and the Raptors, Loyd has been building himself a career as one of the best guards in the whole of Europe. And as a result, the Polish basketball federation has been able to nationalize him, making him eligible to play for them in the EuroBasket tournament.
Jordan Loyd, Raptors Cult Hero
At every level other than the NBA, Loyd has been one of the best players, and had he had a greater opportunity in the NBA, perhaps we would be talking about Jordan Loyd the seven-year veteran instead. As it is, though, Loyd will instead be one of the best Polish players in history. And he will now get the opportunity to perform on the international stage, one of the few remaining to him.
As above, Loyd’s time in the NBA was brief. Very brief. Too brief. But in that time, he managed to win an NBA championship and become a cult figure. This, admittedly, came largely on account of the fortuitous timing that saw him become immortalized as the “Random Guy in a Suit” that was seated beside Kawhi Leonard during Leonard’s historic Game 7 buzzer beater in the 2019 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals victory over the Philadelphia 76ers. But he was never just a meme. Jordan Loyd has long been a quality player. And now, it appears, he will be a quality Polish player.
As always, there is life outside of the NBA. Almost always, the NBA is the apex of an American player’s career. But it is not the only high point – particularly if they can land a foreign passport.
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