NBA hoop dreams on hold for Seton Hall seniors

Myles Powell, Quincy McKnight, Asiah Avent, Romaro Gill

Seton Hall's Myles Powell (13), Quincy McKnight (0), Asiah Avent (30), and Romaro Gill (35) celebrates during a ceremony for seniors before the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Villanova, Wednesday, March 4, 2020, in Newark, N.J. AP

Under normal circumstances, Romaro Gill and Quincy McKnight would have been playing basketball this month before sold-out crowds while trying to help spearhead Seton Hall on a deep run during March Madness.

In the process, the seniors could have also helped their own stock with NBA decision-makers. It’s common during March Madness for players who excel as their teams go deep to lift their stock and help set themselves up for future paychecks.

Just ask Villanova’s Jay Wright, who saw four of his players go inside the top 33 picks of the 2018 NBA Draft after the Wildcats won their second NCAA title in three years that April.

“[Gill and McKnight] are both guys that, during their senior year, really elevated themselves to the point where they’re maybe not considered draftable players but players that are in the mix,” said Chris Ekstrand, a longtime NBA consultant and insider and the former publisher of the NBA Draft Guide.

Ekstrand had extended invitations for the 7-foot-2 Gill and the 6-4 McKnight to attend the prestigious Portsmouth (VA) Invitational Tournament that was set to run April 15-18 before it was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The four-day Portsmouth Tournament generally features under-rated seniors, so Pirates star Myles Powell would not have been invited because he’s considered an elite senior. Gill and McKnight, though, would have played in front of scouts from all 30 NBA teams. The event’s website says 63 of the 64 players from the 2019 event were “invited to at least one NBA tryout camp” and 55 of the 64 “played in the NBA Summer League.”

Jimmy Butler, Jeremy Lin, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, John Stockton, Tim Hardaway and Ben Wallace all played at Portsmouth.

“I felt good [to get invited],” Gill, a native of Jamaica, told NJ Advance Media this week. “Even though I didn’t know what it was at first, after coach (Kevin Willard) told me I felt good about it and I was looking forward to going there and show[ing] what I got.

“But everything got canceled. It’s kind of like heartbreaking, too. The (NCAA) Tournament got canceled, everything got canceled. But sometimes during the days I think about it, it kind of makes me feel sad.”

It’s unclear when the NBA will open back up and when players like Gill and McKnight might next have an opportunity to work out for NBA teams.

“Everything is on hold right now, it feels like it’s just dead in the water,” Gill said.

NBA scouts attended every Seton Hall game this year primarily to watch Powell, who ended up winning Big East Player of the Year honors and is likely to have his No. 13 retired in the rafters at Prudential Center.

While Powell is in the mix to be drafted in the upcoming NBA Draft — which may have to be postponed from June 25 at Barclays Center — Gill and McKnight never appeared on any major mock drafts.

Still, they showed enough to potentially earn interest for a Summer League appearance and then possibly a 10-day contract or a Two-Way Contract, Ekstrand said.

Gill averaged 7.8 points, 5.6 rebounds and 3.2 blocks en route to being named both the Big East Defensive Player of the Year and its Most Improved Player.

For some stretches during the season, he was a potent offensive force, scoring at will on screen-and-roll lob dunks off passes from Powell and McKnight.

“The key is that he did things this year that he hadn’t done previously and consistently,” Ekstrand said. “While he’s probably not ever going to be a great offensive force, he’s a factor. You got a 7-2 guy rolling to the rim, if your defense doesn’t stick him, that’s three or four dunks a game.

“And the way the NBA is played now, there are very few players of his size on the court.”

Ekstrand pointed out that the NBA is trending toward “small-ball” with “stretch fours” and “stretch fives.” Gill didn’t attempt a single 3-pointer in his Seton Hall career, so he’s not the prototypical new-age big man.

“And he’s not going to provide that, but at the same time, when you get a 7-foot-plus guy in an NBA game now, it’s like Christmas for that guy,” Ekstrand said. “Back in the old days when Shaq [O’Neal] was in the league and [Hakeem] Olajuwon and [Patrick] Ewing, every team had to have a number of 7-footers, whether they were any good or not, because they had to soak up some fouls against those all-time great players.”

As for McKnight, he was arguably Seton Hall’s most irreplaceable player this season. He was the consummate gutsy, poised, two-way floor general while averaging 11.9 points, 5.4 assists, 3.3 rebounds and 1.6 steals.

“I like him because he’s the kind of guy who can play the point guard position and has size,” Ekstrand said.

“There are some exceptional players like the Chris Paul-type player who are really small but they’re so good that they force their way into the NBA anyway. But increasingly, when you’re talking about guys who are toward the end of the roster, the NBA teams would much rather have a point guard who has size because that guy when you’re switching and all of a sudden he’s confronted with defending a forward, he’s not a Chris Paul-size player. He’s a guy with a little more size than that.

“So you wouldn’t want to have a strict diet of Quincy McKnight defending 6-8, 230-pound guys, but he’s big enough that in a pinch, when there’s a switch ... he’s not going to get obliterated. He’ll be able to hold his own with some size in there. And increasingly, that’s so important because the way ball movement and player movement are, it’s like it’s five-out all the time. There’s always five guys on the perimeter who can shoot. So bigger point guards like Quincy, even if he’s not an exceptional player, will certainly get a look.”

Unfortunately for McKnight and Gill, they won’t get that look at Portsmouth. And they’ll have to just sit tight and wait for their next opportunity to showcase themselves before NBA scouts.

“We just gotta wait and see what’s going on,” McKnight said. “Nobody really knows what’s going on. It’s just a waiting game.”

Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media.

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