Bryce Cotton Deserves Another Shot In The NBA

When it comes to scouting and talent acquisition, the NBA usually gets it right. As well it should. Armed with by far the largest scouting staffs, the most data analysts, the biggest contact books and the best eyes for talent of any league in the world – plus having the greatest allure and highest salaries by quite some distance – it invariably plays home to the very best basketball players in the world, and it always will.

However, as explored in a recent profile of Mason Jones, having all of the very best players does not mean that everyone in the NBA is better than everyone outside it. If that were the case, there would not be so much roster turnover every offseason. The players in the bottom third of the NBA are forever interchangeable with the next 150 or so players on the cusp, and a few others could realistically merit an even higher place in the NBA’s hierarchy.

Bryce Cotton is one of the latter.

In the interests of fairness, it bears mentioning here that Cotton, a graduate of Providence back in 2014, does in fact have two years of NBA experience. In the NBA, spending so much as one day on a roster during the regular season counts as a year of experience, and so in playing 23 games across two seasons with the Utah Jazz, Phoenix Suns and Memphis Grizzlies between 2014 and 2016, Cotton is therefore an NBA veteran. At one point, he was indeed part of that bottom-third shuffle.

That said, it could easily have been so much more. We could be talking about Bryce Cotton, eight-year NBA veteran and key playoff contributor right now. That is the level of talent that he has.

Instead, let’s talk about Bryce Cotton, three-time MVP. But in Australia.

Cotton has been with the same Australian NBL team, the Perth Wildcats, since 2017. Although import turnover is (anecdotally) slightly lesser than in other leagues of a comparable standard, this is still a rare feat for any American guard playing outside of America, and it speaks to the fact that Cotton has been invaluable to Perth.

Joining the team for the final stages of the 2016-17 season, Cotton joined the defending champion Wildcats at a time that they were putting in a fairly dismal title defence, ranking last in the league. And he made himself a club legend almost immediately. In that year’s championship game, he scored 45 points on his way to the MVP trophy and Perth’s second consecutive title. A literal case of worst to first.

Since that time, Perth have won two more NBL titles (2019 and 2020), led by Cotton, himself the NBL”s Most Valuable Player in 2018, 2020 and 2021. He has averaged more than 22 points per game in each of the last five seasons; for comparison’s sake, only two other players (Mitch Creek and the short but dynamic stint of Craig Randall) scored more than 20 points per game last season.

Cotton is the best offensive player in Australia, by far the best scorer at the ball-handling spot, the player whom Perth’s opponents most have to game-plan around, and someone who has had a big role in why the NBL has undergone the growth spurt that is has. He is quite possibly the best import player in Australian basketball history, and he shows no signs of slowing down.

Offensively, Cotton has the complete package. He is small (a 6’1 listing looks generous), but he is quick, and he uses that speed to move off the ball like the third Curry brother. Cotton is very fast with or without the ball, and gets shots away quickly; while he does not have the exceptional shooting of a Curry, he is nonetheless a good shooter (94 made three-pointers on 36.7% shooting in 30 NBL games last season) whose ability to get open with or without the ball separates him from the pack.

With a bag of moves, three-level scoring, NBA speed and a history of clutch performances, Cotton has kept getting better as a professional and absolutely has a top-level offensive game. Defensively, things have never been as impressive; perhaps due to his offensive importance, Cotton does not put forward the exceptional ball pressure of other low-gravity point guards, and the lack of size makes him ineffective in switch situations. Then again, so does it too for Patty Mills. So does it too for Trae Young. So does it too for Isaiah Thomas. So did it for J.J. Barea. Etc. If you can score enough, you can make it in the NBA.

So intertwined is Cotton with Australia in general, and the Wildcats in particular, that it is hard to now imagine him leaving. Turning 31 in August, Cotton no longer the youngster who can travel the world with reckless abandon, especially since he now has an Australian wife and is applying for Australian citizenship (which has been a whole drama in itself). It seems likely, then, that his two bit-part years of NBA experience will be his only two, and that he will never come back for a third. But just know that he could.