Back in the NBA, Sindarius Thornwell has reason to smile again
Former South Carolina guard Sindarius Thornwell didn’t know what to expect for his NBA future — or if he even had one.
Up until July, Thornwell was weighing playing basketball overseas and trying to figure out when it would be safe to do so.
But one phone call changed his plans. When the New Orleans Pelicans reached out about signing Thornwell as a substitute player for the remainder of the 2020 season, Thornwell said he breathed an immediate “sigh of relief.”
“Just having to even think about that process, it was kind of getting stressful for me, so just to get that call is like a weight off my shoulders,” Thornwell told reporters from the NBA’s “bubble” in Orlando this week. “It was like the first time I smiled in a year, just to be back around guys and playing with guys and just back competing.”
New Orleans signed Thornwell at the beginning of the month, and on Wednesday night Thornwell saw his first minutes on the court as a Pelican, playing the Brooklyn Nets in the first of three inter-squad scrimmages. The NBA regular season is scheduled to resume July 30, with 22 teams competing at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney World.
Before the COVID-19 shutdown, Thornwell was playing for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers in the G League.
Thornwell opened his NBA career with the Los Angeles Clippers, who acquired Thornwell’s rights after the Milwaukee Bucks drafted him with the 48th overall pick in 2017. In two seasons, Thornwell played in 137 games with the Clippers. But after starting 17 games and averaging 15.8 minutes per game in his rookie season, Thornwell started just once and averaged 4.9 minutes in his sophomore campaign.
He signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers before the 2019-20 season but was waived after three preseason games.
“It’s been a roller coaster, but it’s been an experience just going through it, just taking everything that’s handed to me,” Thornwell said. “Accepting every process that I have to go through to get back (in the NBA) … I think it was more mental for me. I think it was just time I needed to get to a mental state and prepare my mind for the game.”
While NBA success has proved elusive for Thornwell to this point, there’s no question about where the Lancaster native stands in South Carolina basketball lore. The 6-foot-5 guard finished his Gamecocks career third all-time in scoring, first in games started and fourth in steals. More importantly, as a senior, Thornwell helped lead Frank Martin’s 2017 South Carolina team to the program’s first-ever Final Four appearance.
SEC coaches voted Thornwell as the conference player of the year after he led the league in scoring with 22.1 points per conference game.
Despite that scoring prowess in college, Thornwell knows that his best chance of sticking in the NBA is through the defensive side of the game, something he hopes to display in his time with the Pelicans.
“My niche is definitely being a defender,” Thornwell said. “Just being a lockdown defender and coming in and giving guys a hard time and making it difficult for them to score and making them have to work because guys are too good in this league for you to stop them. Just to get guys to work hard and try to earn every basket.
“... I continue to make plays for other guys off the bench. I’m extremely grateful for the call, for the opportunity, but throughout my summer process, I wasn’t thirsty to get a call, I was just thirsty for an opportunity to play. My mindset was just getting ready and prepare for whatever was next. Whether that was getting ready to go overseas or next summer, next offseason, or even this offseason. Whatever opportunity it was for me, I was just getting prepared for that and getting myself prepared to take advantage of it.”
This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 9:47 AM.
