LaMelo Ball and RJ Hampton have landed in Australia, and more NBA prospects could join them this season

LaMelo Ball and RJ Hampton have landed in Australia, and more NBA prospects could join them this season

Hampton joined a New Zealand Breakers team where his role is more defined, with the point guard set to start for Dan Shamir’s team; still, he says he’s not worried about his minutes at this point in time.

“I haven’t really talked to the coaches about starting, or much time I’ll have the ball in my hands, or anything like that,” Hampton said. “I’m just gonna go out there and hoop, work hard.”

The exposure these two projected top-10 picks will bring to the NBL, purely from basketball fans tuning in to watch their respective progression, will be immense, but the pair could also have a significant impact on the future of the Next Stars program.

Hampton, in particular, was a player who had the option to attend college, but decided to sign in the NBL, legitimising the pathway.

“Guys have definitely hit me up, asking me how I made my decision,” Hampton said of some of his peers. “I like it so far, but that’ll be up to them at the end of the day, if they wanna go the college route, or come over here to the NBL.”

Jeremy Loeliger, CEO of the NBL and the man leading the recruitment effort for future Next Stars, said the league is still looking at adding more for this coming season.

Ball and Hampton are joined by Terry Armstrong (South East Melbourne Phoenix) and Didi Louzada (Sydney Kings), but Loeliger left the door open for one or two more to enter the league ahead of the 2019-20 campaign.

“We’re certainly doing the hard yards already over in the States, and elsewhere in the world, making sure people are well aware of the Next Stars program,” Loeliger said. "There’s been a great deal of interest; certainly the level of interest has shot up exponentially since first RJ, then LaMelo signed. There’s a great deal of interest.

“There are still some irons in the fire. One way of explaining it would be: the Next Stars program was always intended to provide a second chance for people who might have slipped through the cracks…

“There’s a couple of opportunities that fall into that bucket, that we would consider, and then there’s one or two more highly rated players who are still considering their options for this upcoming season as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw maybe one more out of that group.”

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Olgun Uluc is the Senior Basketball Reporter for Fox Sports Australia. Twitter: @OlgunUluc