UVA Basketball alum Jayden Gardner has signed his first pro contract, inking a deal with the Kortrijk Spurs, a team in the BNXT League in Belgium and the Netherlands.
It’s a relatively new league, formed in 2021, with 20 teams – 11 in Belgium, nine in the Netherlands – playing in mostly D2- and D3-sized venues.
Kortrijk, for instance, plays its home games at Sportcampus Lange Munte, capacity 2,400.
So, no, not the bright lights and big city (Kortrijk’s population: 79,000), but it’s a start for Gardner, whose agent, surprisingly, couldn’t find even Gardner a gig in the NBA Summer League.
Gardner, an undersized power forward at 6’6”, will need to transition from being a spot-up shooter in the post to being more like fellow UVA alum Anthony Gill, who was a solid post player for Tony Bennett in the mid-2010s, played several years in far-flung locales like Turkey and Russia, remaking himself into a 3-and-D guy before landing a job in the NBA with the Washington Wizards in 2020.
Gardner’s shooting in the mid-range would seem to suggest that he could develop into a perimeter threat, and the faster pace to the game in Europe will probably push him in that direction anyway.
He’s already got the D part of 3-and-D down – remember how he owned the 2022 #1 pick, Paolo Banchero, holding Banchero, the 2023 NBA Rookie of the Year, to single digits twice – nine points on 3-of-9 shooting in an upset win in Durham, eight points on 2-of-13 shooting in a narrow loss at JPJ.
JG might need to lose a few pounds from his listed 246 to be able to move around better on the perimeter, but that shouldn’t be a problem.
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Chris Graham
