For the second consecutive year, the Gonzaga Bulldogs didn’t put anybody in the NBA draft. For a program that put seven guys into the NBA across the 2021 through 2024 drafts, back-to-back shutouts is an anomaly. But the draft is only the front door.
Summer League is the NBA’s July proving ground: rookies, undrafted free agents, G League hopefuls, and fringe roster guys getting two weeks of live reps in front of all 30 front offices. It ran in two waves this year: tthe California Classic at Golden State’s Chase Center and Sacramento’s Golden 1 Center from July 3-6, then the main event in Las Vegas at UNLV the following week, where a Summer League champion was crowned on the 19th.
For an undrafted player, everything below the draft is a ladder. A standard contract is a real NBA roster spot. A two-way splits the season between the parent club and its G League affiliate, good for up to 50 NBA games. An Exhibit 10 is a training-camp flyer, a minimum-salary deal that can convert to a two-way or pay a bonus for affiliate time. And a Summer League invite is the bottom rung: a tryout, nothing promised. All five Zags landed somewhere on that ladder, and some made a very compelling case for why they shouldn’t have had to be there in the first place.
Graham Ike — Golden State Warriors
Graham went undrafted this year, but after a busy summer spent working out for about half the teams in the league, he ultimately signed an Exhibit 10 with the Golden State Warriors. Four weeks later he was a Summer League champion. Ike was Golden State’s most reliable big, starting all nine games across the California Classic and Vegas and averaging 9.3 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 1.8 assists while the Warriors ran the table to the Summer League title. The pre-draft book on him was that he was undersized and injury prone. Both of which are fair assessments for an organization potentially dumping millions into a player like Ike’s potential. He spent two weeks answering the only question that matters: can you help a team win? It was an emphatic “yes” from Graham. The Warriors went on to beat Memphis 94-90 in Sunday’s final, making Ike the second Gonzaga Summer League Champion and the first since Brandon Clarke walked away with the title (also with Memphis) in 2019.
His best night came a game earlier, in the semifinal against former teammate Anton Watson and the Lakers. Graham finished with 16 points and 11 rebounds on 6-of-10 shooting in a 92-88 win. He didn’t need the offense in the final (six points, nine boards, three assists, and a block), because by then he’d shown exactly what he is: a screen-setting, glass-cleaning big who makes winning plays without needing to touch the ball every time down the floor (a helpful asset when Yaxel Lendeborg is your frontcourt counterpart) Midway through Vegas, Ike owned one of the best box plus/minus marks of any rookie in the field. The Exhibit 10 gives Golden State the option to convert him to a two-way before the season, and the frontcourt fit is obvious. Nothing’s official yet, but of the five Zags in the desert, Ike made the strongest case, and left with the only trophy.
Jalen Warley — Indiana Pacers
Warley’s problem at Summer League is the same one that got him passed over in June: his best work doesn’t show up in a box score. The Pacers brought him to Vegas on an invite, no contract attached, and used him as a combo forward at the three and the four, the connective, defense-first role he filled at Gonzaga. He appeared in two of Indiana’s four games, averaging about three points and three rebounds in roughly 15 minutes a night, and closed scoreless on 0-for-4 in the Pelicans game, Indiana’s Summer League finale.
None of that is the full measure of Warley, and everyone involved knows it. In his lone Gonzaga season he put up 7.1 points, 4.8 rebounds, and a team-high 1.5 steals while shooting 56.6% from the field. He was the Gonzaga’s best perimeter defender and moonlighted as a small-ball five when the frontcourt got banged up. That’s a real NBA skill set; it just doesn’t pop in a July showcase built for scorers. This was a foot in the door with a well-run organization, not a launchpad for Warley, and the likeliest next stop for last year’s Swiss-army man is the G League.
Tyon Grant-Foster — San Antonio Spurs
Grant-Foster needed the NBA’s fitness-to-play panel to medically clear him before he could even sign, and once he did, he landed with the reigning Western Conference champions — where San Antonio’s depth left him boxed out. The Spurs ran four drafted rookies through Summer League — centers Jayden Quaintance (Kentucky) and Tarris Reed (UConn), guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie (Tennessee), and forward Maliq Brown (Duke). Tyon unfortunately spent both the California Classic and his time in Vegas behind them, earning spot minutes off the bench, nothing sustained.
He hit a fadeaway for a bucket against Golden State in the Classic and dropped in the occasional assist in Vegas, but never got a stretch long enough to build rhythm; one representative shift went 0-for-2 in five minutes. No stat line worth quoting, no roster claim staked. The Spurs didn’t hand him the runway, and there’s not much to read into an audition he barely got to take. Nothing’s signed yet. Most likely he lands in the G League with San Antonio’s Austin affiliate if the Spurs keep his rights, and at 26 with a shaky jumper, a standard or two-way deal is a long shot from here.
Ryan Nembhard: Dallas Mavericks → Atlanta Hawks
Nembhard was the one Zag in Vegas who didn’t need the audition. He arrived already made, a year removed from going undrafted and playing his way from a two-way onto a standard NBA contract midway through his rookie season, with Dallas picking up his team option for 2026-27. So Summer League was just a tune-up, and a brief one. He played two games, put up 8.0 points and 8.8 assists, then sat the Mavericks’ final three with an illness. Even in that brief window of floor time the passing was the story.
Then the offseason moved him anyway. On July 19, the same day the Vegas bracket wrapped, Dallas sent Nembhard to Atlanta in a three-team deal built around Lu Dort, with former No. 1 pick Zaccharie Risacher going back to the Mavericks and three second-round picks landing in Oklahoma City. A new Dallas front office and coaching staff simply had other plans. In Atlanta he reunites with former Zag Corey Kispert and fellow Canadians Dort and Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and slots in as backcourt depth behind CJ McCollum and rookie Kingston Flemings (I want to say emphatically that I don’t believe there is a world in which Kingston Flemings is a better point guard than Ryan Nembhard). He walked into July with an NBA job and walked out of it with a different one.
Atlanta just had its best season in years: 46-36, sixth in the East and first in the Southeast Division, and they broke through to the playoffs outright after four straight years stuck in the Play-In tournament. Ending up on Atlanta’s roster is no longer the “shipped to Siberia” fate it once was and it’ll be thrilling to watch two former Zags share a floor once again.
Anton Watson: Los Angeles Lakers
Watson’s third Summer League showed why the dude still deserves to be employed by the NBA. He opened the California Classic by tipping in a buzzer-beater to steal a double-overtime win over Miami, part of a 12-point, 10-rebound night, then carried that into a strong Vegas run. The Lakers went undefeated in group play and grabbed the top overall seed, and Watson’s fingerprints were all over it. In the opener he drew 7-foot-3 lottery pick Aday Mara, gave up seven inches, and held him to two points on 0-of-3. It was pretty hilarious watching Anton absolutely body the reigning NCAA champion. Against Chicago he chipped in eight points on 3-of-5 with four assists and one turnover. The connective, switchable defense that defined his Gonzaga career translated cleanly.
The run ended cold. In the semifinal against Graham Ike and the eventual-champion Warriors, Watson went 1-of-9 for two points in a 92-88 loss, and Los Angeles ran out of offense. One bad shooting night doesn’t erase the two weeks, but it’s the kind of quiet close that can keep a dude in the G-League for longer than he’d like to be. As for what’s next, the Lakers still hold his G League rights and he’s ticketed to rejoin their newly rebranded Coachella Valley affiliate. A strong training camp could nudge him toward a two-way, but another year in the G League is the likeliest outcome.
Five Zags, five different verdicts. Ike left the champion and the best bet for a real NBA deal. Watson did the quiet, useful things again and has a two-way within reach. Warley and Grant-Foster got the thinnest looks and are likely G League bound. Although none got drafted in June, the program still funnels pros into the league.
And the drought should not last much longer. The 2026-27 roster is loaded with names already popping up on preseason draft watchlists, led by Arizona State transfer Massamba Diop, and followed closely by sophomore wing Davis Fogle. Isiah Harwell and Izan Almansa round out the group of hopefuls. After two straight quiet Junes for the Bulldogs, the draft drought will almost certainly be over by this time next year.
