For many years, Andre Roberson was a mainstay of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Alongside the stardom of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden, Roberson was the big-minute role player, the defensive specialist who sought not to shoot – and who could not do it anyway.
However, as sizeable of a part of the Thunder rotation as he once was, Roberson’s NBA career would dribble to a premature end due to injuries, a lack of offensive development, and the much-changing circumstances of the only NBA team he has ever known. After moving on from Roberson in 2020, the Thunder would soon begin the Shai Gilgeous-Alexander era, a vaunted period of quick success that saw them bring home the first title in the franchise’s history this past season. Roberson, in the nicest and most respectful way possible, was quickly forgotten about.
He did not, however, quit basketball. Instead, after a quick hiatus, Roberson has rebuilt his playing career – on the other side of the Atlantic.
Roberson’s Prime Years In The NBA
Roberson played 302 regular season games and 26 playoff games for the Thunder between 2013 and 2020, and started almost all of them. In his heyday between 2014 and 2018, he started all but two of the games he played, and peaked as an individual performer in 2015-17, when he finished tied for fifth in that season’s Defensive Player of the Year award voting while appearing on his first and only All-NBA Defensive Second Team.
He may have averaged only 6.6 points, 5.1 rebounds and 1.2 steals in 30.1 minutes per game that season, but try telling those Andre Roberson was matched up against that he was a non-factor. They would not agree. The real ones knew.
Injury, however, quickly became the tale of the tape. With Durant long gone, the Thunder were a first-round caliber team only in 2017-18, and despite re-signing to a three-year, $30 million contract before the season began, Roberson would manage only 39 games that season before rupturing his patella tendon in January. It was a rare and very severe injury. And it decimated his once-thriving career; the repeated setbacks in his rehab, and related injuries, would eventually keep Roberson out of basketball for more than two and a half years.
Drastic Career Trajectory Change
When Roberson did finally return in August 2020, the world and the Thunder were both very different from where he had left them. He did manage to make seven bit-part appearances for the Thunder in the pandemic-induced bubble, but when his contract expired after its conclusion, the phone did not ring. Not from the Thunder, and not from anyone else.
From featured player and star role player on competitive NBA championship teams to out of the league and sitting by the phone, all before the age of 30, the tendon injury changed Roberson’s career trajectory immensely. The expiration of a couple of brief part-season contracts with the Brooklyn Nets in early 2021 marked the end of his NBA career, and that was it – between September 2020 and September 2024, five appearances with the Nets and an unbecoming 14-game stint in the G League were all Roberson could manage, anywhere in the world.
However, having taken more time to get right, the good news is that Roberson is now back, and playing good quality basketball.
Last season, Roberson began a European career, initially joining Cholet before being called up to the EuroLeague level to play with ASVEL Villeurbanne, where he could once again be seen doing some Andre Roberson-esque things. In 25 games of EuroLeague play last season, Roberson averaged 8.4 points, 6.2 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 1.2 steals and 1.1 blocks per game.
He never stopped knowing how to play; he just stopped being able to for a few years. But those days are behind him now, and Roberson’s career will continue into next season, too, as it was announced he will move to Russia to play for Zenit St Petersburg.
With Roberson thriving and Alex Abrines retiring, it has been a week of mixed news for the non-Westbrook members of the 2016-17 Oklahoma City Thunder, and while it is a reach perhaps to suggest that Roberson could make an NBA comeback at the age of 33 – Serge Ibaka, himself still an NBA-calibre player, seems like the likelier of the two to do so – at least Roberson is able to write the end of the story himself this time.
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