In 2011, Pat Connaughton was ranked by one scouting service as the 33rd-best prospect in the Major League Baseball draft. Pro clubs passed on his services, however, when it became clear that he was going to attend Notre Dame to both play baseball and act as a swingman on the Fighting Irish’s basketball team. Connaughton shined in his college basketball career as a shooter and scorer, and though the Baltimore Orioles drafted him in 2014, enamored by his 96 mile per hour fastball, he stuck it out one last year playing basketball.
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Connaughton was drafted 31st overall by Brooklyn in the 2015 NBA draft, and was immediately traded to Portland. Despite some innings worked in A-ball, he appears to have chosen basketball as his go-to sport for now, eschewing the sort of double-dipping that made Bo Jackson a legend a quarter-century ago.
Portland kind of wants to keep things going in this direction. In a talk with NBA.com’s Iam Thomsen, Portland general manager Neil Olshey confirmed that they’re not entirely keen with Connaughton trying to have it both ways:
“That’s not happening,” says Neil Olshey, the general manager of the Blazers. “The conversation we had with Pat prior to all of this was you’re an NBA player now. Being an NBA player is not a part-time job.”
Connaughton understands.
“The time when Pat would be going to play baseball is a time when you’re working on your game and getting better,” Olshey says. “You see how valuable July is. During the development phase, when you’re a second-round pick in the NBA and you have a ways to go to have a translatable skill-set in our league, you need Summer League, you need Grg’s camp (run by Bucks assistant Tim Grgurich), you need to spend the offseason in the gym. You can’t do that on a part-time basis.”
Connaughton agrees with all of this.
“Now, look,” continues Olshey, “if he gets into a second contract down the road and that is something he wants to pursue, then that can be a discussion point …”
The “second contract” refers to the one beyond his current, one-year, $625,000 deal. That’s not a locked-in rate for second-rounders, but it’s a fair deal and if Connaughton can build upon his promise in Portland’s rebuilding year, he’ll be in line for another guaranteed deal worth millions.
And it’s more than likely that Pat will save this clip about a potential “discussion point” for future negotiations regarding his baseball hopes.
NBA teams are smarter than ever. They are worth more than ever, and their players are worth more than ever. Despite all of our misgivings about certain teams lacking in the scouting or statistical side of things, franchises are still pouring ungodly amounts of time and resource into player development and analysis.
As a result, basketball never stops. And, even for a guy with a 96 MPH fastball, baseball may never start.
The last notable MLB player to make an NBA stint, or vice versa, was reserve forward and lefty hurler Mark Hendrickson. Hendrickson, who was 6-9, understandably elected to follow his NBA dream initially in order to take advantage of his size and guaranteed money, and he played reserve stints in Allen Iverson’s first season with the Philadelphia 76ers and a second half-year with the Sacramento Kings in 1997-98.
He bounced around to two more NBA teams before giving the game up in order to concentrate fully on his pitching career, a career that blossomed into a nine-year MLB run. He retired in 2015 with a 58-74 record as a long reliever, ending his career with 666 strikeouts, which is pretty badass.
The most notable MLB/NBA transplant is three-time NBA champion (two as a player, one as a team executive) Danny Ainge, who was a no-hit/good-field second basemen for the Toronto Blue Jays for two years while still (how was this possible?) playing basketball in college at BYU. After Ainge (who came “really, really close” to drafting Pat) made March Madness history in 1981 with a game-beating shot against Notre Dame, while winning the John Wooden Award as player of the year in the same season, he abandoned baseball for the comfort of the then-champion Boston Celtics.
Ainge, though he struggled initially, was a famous can’t-miss basketball prospect. Hendrickson was a big guy that could always get a camp invite. Connaughton is neither.
That’s not to deny his talent, nor his athleticism. Connaughton can clearly play, and he has the skills to eke out a long career as a shooter at this level. Baseball relies on skill more than athleticism, but it’s clear that both skill and athleticism are behind Connaughton’s velocity on the mound, so it’s understandable that he would want to take advantage while the radar gun is still steaming.
That would also mean moving up the minor league ranks, though. Biding his time and making minimal salary compared to what he would make either as a second-round fringe NBA prospect this year, or a potential free agent signee next season. Connaughton did earn a nearly $430k signing bonus when the Orioles drafted him in 2014, but the minor league route to the bigs is less lucrative.
And even though Olshey’s investment in the 22-year old isn’t too dear (he’ll make about one-tenth of the average NBA player’s salary in 2015-16), it’s understandable that he wants him to be building muscle memory that has less to do with developing a circle change and more to do with “you’re going to have to guard James Harden in the second quarter of a game this year.”
Baseball to basketball is rare. Though the NBA deliberately tips off around the same time the World Series ends and the seasons nearly offset, the skill sets don’t often match up. On top of that, there is a reason that the stories of Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders were a late 1980s and early 1990s phenomenon. NFL teams just wouldn’t stand for offseason dalliances in this era. Sanders’ baseball career ended mainly because he was merely a middling player, an accomplishment to be sure. Jackson’s football career ended because of a freak injury.
Connaughton’s career is just beginning, and it’s more than possible that his baseball career could pick up again at some point. It would take quite a bit of heat, however, to convince the Trail Blazers that his Julys would be best spent on the mound, rather than inside a gym.
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- Pat Connaughton
- Mark Hendrickson
